LIBRARY 

OF   TIT  it 

UNIVERSITY. OF  CALIFORNIA 


Ol  T^T  O  K 


.Accession  85998  Cto 


CHAPTERS  ON  PLANT  LIFE 


BY 


SOPHIE  BLEDSOE  HERRICK 


illustrate* 


NEW  YORK  •:•  CINCINNATI  •:•  CHICAGO 

AMERICAN    BOOK    COMPANY 


BIOLOGY 
LIBRARY 


Copyright,  1885,  oy  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 


MERRICK'S  PL.  L. 
B-P   8 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I.                                     PAGE 
INTRODUCTORY 9 

CHAPTER  II. 
A  FLOWERLESS  FLOUR  GARDEN 13 

CHAPTER  in. 
THE  FAIRY  FUNGI 28 

CHAPTER  IV. 
ODD  FISH  IN  THE  VEGETABLE  WORLD 43 

CHAPTER  V. 
LICHENS 57 

CHAPTER  VI. 
PLANTS  AND  ANIMALS — THEIR  DIFFERENCE 71 

CHAPTER  VII. 
THE  THIRSTY  FLOWERS 84 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
PLANTS  CAUGHT  NAPPING   .  .  95 


85998 


4  Contents. 

CHAPTER  IX.  PAGE 

LIVERWORTS  ..............    ....  107 

CHAPTER  X. 
MOSSES  ....................  12° 

CHAPTER  XI. 
FERNS  ....................  132 

CHAPTER  XII. 
FLOWERS  IN  FANCY  DRESS     ............  142 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

"PlCCIOLA"  ..................    157 

CHAPTER  XIV. 
CLIMBING  PLANTS  ................  11% 


CHAPTER  XV. 
VEGETABLE  PITCHERS    ..............  183 

CHAPTER  XVI. 
SOME  QUEER  TRAPS  ..........    .....  193 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


FIG.  PAGK 

1.  TOADSTOOLS ,15 

2.  YEAST  PLANT 16 

3.  MOULD  (Penicilliuni) 21 

4.  MOULD  (Aspergittus) 24 

5.  MOULD  (Mucor) 25 

6.  GRAPE  FUNGUS 31 

7.  POTATO  FUNGUS 34 

8.  LEAF  MILDEW .35 

9.  RYE  SMUT 37 

10.  MILDEW  ON  VIRGINIA  CREEPER 39 

11.  SILK-WORM  FUNGUS 41 

12.  FIRST-BERRY  FISH 45 

13.  EEL-PLANT 48 

14.  COLONIES  OF  FIRST-BERRY  FISH 51 

15.  VEGETABLE  SHELL-FISH 53 

16.  "                 " 55 

17.  LICHEN  MAGNIFIED 60 

18.  WOOLLY  LICHEN 62 

19.  LICHEN 64 

20.  ENCRUSTING  LICHEN 65 

21.  REINDEER  LICHEN 67 

22.  ANIMAL  SEAWEED  (Plumularia) 72 


6  Illustrations. 

FIO.  PAGE 

23.  ANIMAL 73 

24.  VEGETABLE 74 

25.  WATER  PLANT  AND  WATER  ANIMAL 75 

26.  LIVERWORT  MOUTH  OR  ROOM 79 

27.  PLANT  MOUTH 80 

28.  CELLS 86 

29.  CORN  STALK  CUT  ACROSS 88 

30.  PLANT  MOUTHS 89 

31.  WATER-CARRYING  TUBES  (Side  View  of  Corn-stalk  Tubes)    91 

32.  CACTUS 93 

33.  LOCUST  BRANCH  AWAKE 97 

34.  LOCUST  BRANCH  ASLEEP ,    ....    98 

35.  SENSITIVE  PLANT  AWAKE 99 

36.  SENSITIVE  PLANT  ASLEEP 100 

37.  YELLOW  AND  COMMON  WHITE  CLOVER 103 

38.  THE  PATH  OF  THE  NOD 105 

39.  LEAP  OF  LIVERWORT 109 

40.  PART  OF  LEAF  OF  LIVERWORT,  MAGNIFIED   .    .     .    .    „  110 

41.  LEAF  OF  LIVERWORT  CUT  THROUGH  ONE  ROOM  AND  FLOOR  111 

42.  SEED  DISK 113 

43.  WHIP-CASE 115 

44.  CUPULE,  OR  NEST 118 

45.  Moss  SPORE-CASES 123 

46.  YOUNG  Moss  PLANT 124 

47.  WHIP-CASE 126 

48.  OVULE-CASE      .     .     , 127 

49.  SPHAGNUM  ENLARGED 128 

50.  WHIP-CASE 129 

51.  SPHAGNUM-LEAF  MAGNIFIED 130 

52.  YOUNG  FERN 133 

53.  LEAF  WITH  SPORE-CASES  ON  BACK  .  134 


Illustrations.  7 

FIG.  I'AOK 

55.  AIR-VESSELS  OF  FERN 138 

56.  LEAF  OF  FERN 139 

57.  LADY'S-SLIPPER 143 

58.  BUTTERFLY  ORCHID 144 

59.  CLIMBING  ORCHID 145 

60.  YOUNG  PLANT  GROWING  ON  FLOWER  STEM 147 

61.  HONEY  POUCH  AND  POLLEN  PODS 151 

62.  PENCIL  AND  NEEDLE,  WITH  POLLEN 154 

63.  BUTTERFLY'S  PROBOSCIS,  WITH  POLLEN 155 

64.  CORN  AND  MAGNIFIED  ROOT 162 

65.  GERANIUM  PISTIL 165 

66.  GERANIUM  STAMEN  AND  POLLEN  GRAINS 166 

67.  PISTIL  OF  HEART'S-EASE 170 

68.  THE  BEAN.    FIRST  LEAVES  m  DIFFERENT  STAGES      .    .174 

69.  MOVEMENT  OF  ROOT  OF  BLACK  BEAN 175 

70.  MORNING-GLORIES 176 

71.  VIRGINA  CREEPER 177 

72.  PADS  THROUGH  THE  MICROSCOPE 178 

73.  DIAGRAM  OF  STRAIGHT  AND  CURVED  STEMS 181 

74.  OPEN-MOUTHED  PITCHER 184 

75.  PITCHER  WITH  OVERHANGING  HOOD  AND  CLEAR  WINDOWS  185 

76.  PITCHER-PLANT  IN  BLOOM 189 

77.  DARLINGTONIA  CALIFORNICA 190 

78.  BLADDER-WORT 191 

79.  BLADDER  WITH  CAPTURED  PREY 191 

80.  SUN-DEW  PLANT 194 

81.  SUN-DEW  LEAF  MAGNIFIED,  SHOWING  TENTACLES   .    .     .  196 

82.  LEAVES  OF  VENUS'S  FLY-TRAP 201 

83.  AUSTRALIAN  PITCHER-PLANT 203 

84.  BIRD  TRAP  .  .  205 


CHAPTERS    ON   PLANT    LIFE. 


CHAPTER  I. 
INTRODUCTORY. 

You  have  read  enough  Indian  stories,  I  am 
sure,  to  know  how  very  different  life  among  sav- 
ages is  from  ours.  An  Indian  brave,  if  he  has  no 
family,  is  obliged  to  do  all  his  own  work.  He 
makes  his  tent,  or  wigwam,  hunts  for  his  food, 
gathers  sticks  for  his  fire,  cooks  the  animals  he 
has  captured — can  live  his  simple  life  indepen- 
dent of  the  work  of  any  other  man.  If  he  has  a 
family,  he  only  hunts,  or  fights  for  their  protec- 
tion, while  the  women  weave  the  mats,  make  the 
moccasins,  cook,  and  even  raise  some  poor,  meagre 
crops.  This  is  what  is  called  a  division  of  labor : 
not  a  very  equal  one  in  the  case  of  the  Indian. 


10  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

It  is  found  that  when  one  man  does  one  kind 
of  work  constantly,  and  another  man  another 
kind,  that  they  each  gain  so  much  skill  that  there 
is  a  saving  of  time  and  labor.  If  each  exchanges 
with  the  other  so  much  of  the  results  of  his  labor 
as  they  need,  they  are  better  off.  As  people  get 
more  peaceful  and  wiser  and  more  civilized,  this 
division  goes  on  more  and  more. 

Something  like  this  civilizing  may  be  seen  in 
the  vegetable  world  as  we  go  from  the  simpler 
forms,  of  life  to  those  that  are  higher.  Every 
plant  is  made  up  of  one  or  more  bodies  called 
cells.  The  plant  of  a  single  cell  is  like  a  sin- 
gle Indian,  and  does  its  own  work  in  growing 
and  eating  and  breathing.  Finally  it  produces 
more  cells  like  itself.  Small,  simple  plants,  such 
as  we  shall  see  among  the  fairy  fungi  and  odd 
fish,  are  either  single  savages,  or  savages  in  fam- 
ilies or  tribes,  banded  together  for  protection 
and  for  ease'  in  living,  but  each  one  capable  of 
doing  everything  for  itself  if  it  has  to. 


Introductory.  11 

The  higher  plants,  such  as  every  field  and  gar- 
den and  wood  afford,  are  like  a  great  society,  such 
as  we  live  in  and  make  parts  of.  Each  cell  of 
the  thousands  and  thousands  has  its  own  work 
to  do  for  the  whole  society,  and  depends  not 
alone  upon  its  own  work,  but  in  part  upon  the 
work  of  a  great  many  others. 

If  we  were  to  try  to  study  one  of  these  plants 
with  its  different  kinds  of  cells,  at  first  we  would 
be  all  puzzled  and  confused.  Cells  which  were 
originally  alike  have  so  changed  in  appearance 
and  work  that  we  would  learn  very  little.  And 
so  the  world  did  learn  very  little  as  long  as  it 
tried  to  study  in  such  a  way.  But  of  late  years 
people  have  learned  to  begin  with  the  A  B  C's 
of  science,  as  well  as  of  reading  and  writing. 
When  we  begin  to  take  things  up  in  this  way, 
and  arrange  them  in  a  sort  of  order,  we  find  that 
it  is  not  an  order  of  our  inventing,  but  the  order 
in  which  God  let  them  grow,  way,  way  back 
thousands  and  thousands  of  years  ago,  when  the 


12  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

world  was  being  gradually  made.  If  God  cre- 
ated them  slowly,  one  after  another,  the  easiest 
and  simplest  first,  and  then  those  that  were  less 
simple  afterwards,  that  is  certainly  a  good  rea- 
son for  studying  them  in  this  same  order. 

I  want  to  begin  at  the  simplest  single  cell-plant, 
and  try  to  make  it  clear  to  you  how  these  little 
creatures  live  and  grow  and  multiply.  There  are 
two  great  divisions  in  the  plant  world — the  fun- 
gous plants  and  the  green  plants;  and  what  is 
true  of  the  tiniest  members  of  these  two  divisions 
in  regard  to  their  breathing  and  eating,  is  true  of 
the  greatest.  The  small  fungous  plants,  like  yeast 
and  mould  and  mildew,  and  the  largest  toadstools, 
live  on  other  living  or  dead  creatures;  the  green 
plants  draw  their  food  from  the  earth  and  air 
and  water.  As  the  fungi  are  the  simplest  of  all, 
we  will  begin  with  them. 


A  Flouoerless  Flour  Garden.  13 


CHAPTER  II. 

A  FLOWERLES8  FLOUR  GARDEN. 

WE  all  know,  in  a  general  way,  that  nothing 
grows  unless  it  is  alive,  and  yet  who  ever  thinks 
of  bread  dough  as  having  life  in  it  ?  There  nev- 
er was  a  garden  bed  so  full  of  living  plants  as 
is  the  loaf  when  it  is  moulded  into  shape,  and 
ready  to  be  put  into  the  oven.  If  you  have  nev- 
er watched  the  mixing  of  bread,  I  would  advise 
you  to  go  and  look  at  it  the  first  chance  you 
have,  for  it  is  a  very  curious  and  entertaining  bit 
of  gardening.  The  cook  first  prepares  her  seed, 
which  is  the  yeast.  There  are  several  ways  of 
planting  common  flower-seed,  and  so  there  are  of 
planting  yeast.  You  may  either  soak  the  seed 
to  make  them  sprout  quickly,  or  you  may  start 
the  little  plants  in  a  hot-bed ;  or,  again,  you  may 


14  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

buy  your  young  seedlings,  and  transplant  them 
into  your  own  garden  plot.  Just  so  you  may 
get  your  yeast  seed  ready  to  plant.  The  yeast 
cake  may  be  only  melted  in  warm  water,  or  it 
may  be  set  to  start  in  a  cup  of  water  and  flour 
by  the  warm  kitchen  fire,  or  you  may  buy  the 
yeast  already  grown  at  the  baker's. 

When  the  seed  or  seedlings  are  ready,  the  gar- 
den plot  is  prepared.  The  cook  heaps  up  in  her 
bread  bowl  quarts  of  snowy  flour.  Into  this 
heap,  after  making  a  hole,  she  pours  her  pre- 
pared yeast.  Working  the  bread  is  only  an- 
other name  for  the  careful  scattering  of  the  seed 
through  all  the  dough,  that  it  may  spring  up 
and  grow,  and  fill  the  whole  mass  with  the  tiny 
plants. 

The  yeast  plant  is  not  a  common  kind  of  plant, 
but  belongs  to  the  same  class  as  mushrooms  and 
toadstools  (Fig.  1),  and  the  fuzzy,  cottony  growth 
that  we  call  mould.  There  are  two  kinds  of 
plants  that  we  may  find  almost  anywhere  in  the 


A  Flowerless  Flour  Garden. 


15 


FIG.  1. — TOADSTOOLS. 

fields  and  woods,  and  even  in  the  city  yards — the 
fungi  and  the  green  plants.  The  yeast  plant  is 
one  of  the  fungi.  These  are  very  different  in 
most  respects  from  the  green  plants:  they  can 
live  and  grow  and  thrive  in  darkness;  they  do 


16 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


not  have  either  leaves  or  flowers,  and  they  usual- 
ly spring  up  and  die  very  quickly.     The  greatest 
real  difference  between  the  two  kinds  is,  how- 
ever, that  the  fungi  live  on  food  that  has  been 
alive  before — on  plants  or  animals  or  decaying 
matter — while  the  green  plants  live  on  what  they 
get  out  of  the  earth,  and  the  air,  and  the  water. 
The  simplest  of  all  the  fungi  is  the  yeast  plant. 
It  begins  its  life  as  a  tiny  egg- 
shaped  bag,  or  sac  (Fig.  2,  a). 
This    cell,  as    it   is   called,  is 
filled  with  a  very  curious  jel- 
ly, perhaps  the  most  wonder- 
ful thing  in  all  the  wrorld.     It 
is  found   in   everything   that 
lives  and  grows.     By  its  help 
the  little  yeast  plant  can  take  the  flour  and  wa- 
ter, and  can  change  it  so  that  while  the  paste  is 
used  up  and  disappears,  the  cells  grow  larger 
and  sprout  out  buds.     You  have  particles  of  this 
jelly,  or  protoplasm,  lining  your  mouth  and  ston> 


FIG.  2. — YEAST  PLANT. 

(TorulcB.} 

a,  Single  cells ;  &,  grow- 
ing plants. 


A  Flowerless  Flour  Garden.  17 

ach,  and  the  food  you  eat  is  changed  into  flesh 
and  blood  and  bones  by  this  wonder-working 
magician.  In  the  figures,  the  grainy  substance  is 
the  protoplasm. 

This  jelly  all  seems  to  be  pretty  much  alike,  no 
matter  in  what  plant  or  animal  you  find  it;  but 
there  is  some  marvellous  difference  somewhere — 
a  difference  that  science  has  never  reached.  The 
yeast  cell  takes  in  certain  food,  and  grows,  but  it 
never  makes  anything  but  other  or  larger  yeast 
cells.  The  food  you  eat  and  digest  makes  just 
yon;  more  of  you,  perhaps,  but  still  you,  your- 
self, and  nobody  else. 

Like  all  living  things,  the  tiny  yeast  cell  must 
both  eat  and  breathe,  or  it  will  die.  It  feeds,  not 
by  opening  its  mouth  and  taking  in  its  food,  but 
by  lying  bathed  in  it,  and  soaking  it  up  through 
its  skin.  When  the  cook  dissolves  her  yeast 
cake,  and  puts  it  into  the  mixture  of  flour  and 
water  we  call  dough,  she  is  putting  the  little 
plant  into  its  food  bath.  The  cells  which  have 


18  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

been  so  long  in  prison,  shut  up  in  the  darkness 
and  cold  of  the  dried  yeast,  begin  to  look  alive, 
and  stretch  themselves,  and  enjoy  their  liberty. 
They  take  kindly  to  their  food  right  away,  and 
begin  helping  themselves  to  what  they  find  about 
them.  They  do  not  merely  soak  up  the  flour 
and  water  in  which  they  are  plunged,  but  they 
manage  to  extract  from  the  compound  just  what 
they  need  to  make  them  grow. 

The  cells  must  not  only  feed  in  order  to  live, 
but  they  must  breathe,  they  must  somehow  get 
oxygen,  which  is  the  gas  that  our  breathing 
takes  out  of  the  air.  And  this  they  extract,  as 
a  miner  does  iron,  by  separating  it  from  its  ore. 
There  is  a  certain  amount  of  sugar  in  wheat, 
which  gives  to  good  bread  and  to  cracked  wheat 
their  delicate  sweetness  of  flavor.  Sugar  is  made 
up  of  a  number  of  different  substances,  which  the 
yeast  cell  has  the  power  of  separating.  It  takes 
the  oxygen  for  its  own  use,  and  leaves  behind 
the  other  things  that  make  up  the  sugar.  The 


A  Flowerless  Flour  Garden.  19 

change  that  goes  on  in  the  flour  and  water  dough 
under  the  influence  of  the  growing  yeast  plant  is 
called  fermenting. 

Feeding  and  breathing  in  this  way,  by  taking 
what  it  needs  from  the  flour,  the  cell  grows. 
When  it  has  reached  its  mature  size,  it  rests  qui- 
etly for  a  while,  as  if  it  were  gathering  strength 
for  the  effort,  and  then  it  sen(Js  out  a  little  bud, 
which  grows  like  the  parent  cell,  until  another 
bud  sprouts  from  the  end  of  the  new  sac.  When 
this  is  grown,  it  is  very  unlike  our  notion  of  a 
plant;  it  is  really  nothing  more  than  a  little 
chain  of  sacs  growing  end  to  end.  As  soon  as 
the  little  plant  has  exhausted  all  the  sugar  and 
food  substance  of  the  flour,  it  stops  growing,  the 
cells  separate  and  remain  quite  still. 

There  is  just  one  time  in  the  growth  of  the 
plant  when  the  dough  is  right  for  baking.  Be- 
fore it  has  grown  enough,  the  bubbles  through 
the  dough  are  too  few  or  too  small,  and  the 
bread,  if  baked  at  this  stage,  would  be  heavy. 


20  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

These  bubbles  are  the  carbonic  acid  gas  left  be- 
hind when  the  oxygen  has  been  taken  out  of  the 
sugar,  and  there  must  be  plenty  of  them  to  make 
the  bread  light.  If  the  bread  is  left  too  long  to 
rise,  the  cells  get  more  than  their  share  of  the 
wheat-sugar,  and  the  bread  is  sour.  Just  at  the 
right  stage,  which  every  good  bread -maker  can 
tell  by  experience,  a  thorough  baking  will  de- 
destroy  the  alcohol — which  is  one  of  the  things 
left  behind  while  the  yeast  is  growing — and  the 
bread  will  be  both  sweet  and  light. 

When  the  yeast  plant  is  sowed  on  the  top  of 
the  flour  and  water,  instead  of  being  buried  in 
it,  all  this  is  very  different.  The  plant  takes  its 
food  from  the  paste,  but  it  does  not  need  the 
sugar  to  supply  it  with  oxygen,  so  it  lets  that 
alone.  It  can  get  its  oxygen  in  a  much  simpler 
way,  right  from  the  air,  as  we  do,  and  does  not 
need  to  go  through  the  labor  of  smelting  it  out 
of  the  sugar.  The  raising  of  our  bread  by  yeast 
is  entirely  due  to  the  efforts  of  the  tiny  cells  to 


A  Flowerless  Flour  Garden.  21 

get  a  breath   of  air  when  we   have  smothered 
them  up  in  the  dough. 

There  are  other  plants  besides  the  yeast  plant 
that  act  in  the  same  way.  Have  you  never 
heard  your  mother  say,  when  she  opened  a  jar 


FIG.  3.— MOULD. 
(Penicillium.) 


of  preserves,  "These  are  all  right,  I  know,  for 
they  are  covered  with  mould  ?"  Mould  is  a 
good  deal  like  yeast  in  some  things;  if  the  germ 
cell,  or  spore,  falls  upon  the  top  of  the  sweet- 


22  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

meats,  it  can  get  plenty  of  oxygen  from  the  air, 
and  so  lets  the  sugar  alone.  But  if  it  is  nearly 
drowned  in  the  sirup,  it  will  get  its  oxygen 
somehow,  and  so  the  sugar  has  to  be  sacrificed, 
and  the  preserves  are  left  to  spoil.  What  else 
could  you  expect  of  such  little  mischief-makers 
if  you  shut  them  up  with  the  sweetmeats? 

The  yeast  plant  is  so  very,  very  small  that  you 
cannot  see  it  except  with  a  very  fine  magnifying 
glass.  But  there  are  other  plants  like  it  which 
are  large  enough  to  be  seen  with  a  small  and  not 
a  costly  microscope.*  These  are  what  we  call 
moulds.  If  you  want  to  study  moulds,  nothing 


*  There  is  a  little  microscope  which  can  be  gotten  from  James 
W.  Queen,  924  Chestnut  Street,  Philadelphia,  called  the  Child's  Mi- 
croscope, No.  3055,  price  $3  50,  with  three  lenses.  It  is  in  a  small 
walnut  box,  has  a  little  mirror,  stand,  two  dissecting  needles,  box 
for  live  insects,  etc. ,  a  pair  of  forceps,  watch  glass,  and  plain  slides. 
It  magnifies  about  thirty-three  diameters  (nearly  1000  times  in  area), 
and  gives  a  good  clear  image,  besides  having  the  advantage  of  be- 
ing an  excellent  pocket  glass,  even  if  you  should  buy  a  more  costly 
instrument  hereafter. 


A  Flowerless  Flour  Garden.  23 

is  easier  than  to  prepare  them.  Mix  a  spoonful 
of  flour  with  cold  water,  and  spread  the  paste 
over  the  bottom  of  a  plate  or  saucer.  In  a  few 
days  it  will  be  covered  all  over.  If  you  put  it 
in  a  damp  and  dark  place,  the  mould  will  sprout 
sooner.  You  might  put  away  a  piece  of  bread 
at  the  same  time,  and  you  will  find  it  covered 
with  a  growth  too. 

Take  a  bit  of  this  paste  on  the  blade  of  a 
knife,  and  examine  it  carefully.  You  will  see 
among  the  cottony  fibres  a  number  of  little  up- 
right stems  with  black  or  white  or  yellow  heads, 
which  give  the  mould  a  speckled  look.  Under 
the  microscope  you  see  a  perfect  jungle  of  growth 
—  a  tangle  of  threads,  which  look  like  spun 
glass,  running  here  and  there  and  everywhere. 
From  these,  which  serve  as  roots  to  the  mould, 
the  stems  spring  up,  bearing,  instead  of  leaves 
or  flowers,  tiny  glistening  toadstools  that  look 
as  if  they  were  made  out  of  a  pearl ;  or  some- 
times the  heads  are  like  strings  of  little  pearls 


24  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

(Fig.  3),  or  at  others  they  are  rosettes  of  such 
strings  (Fig.  4,  a).  The  black  and  sage-green 
colors  come  later,  and  are  the  fruit  or  seed -bear- 
ing portion  of  the  plant  (Fig.  4,  &). 


FIG.  4.— MOULD. 

(Aspergillm.} 
a,  Rosette  Heads ;  &,  Fruit. 

On  my  saucer  of  paste  I  found  in  one  place  a 
plantation  of  delicate  yellow  fungi.  The  stems 
came  up  thick,  with  the  little  round  fruit  at  the 
end  of  each,  looking  as  if  the  whole  thing  was 
carved  out  of  amber.  In  another  place,  over  the 
yawning  caverns  made  by  the  cracks  in  the  paste, 


A  Flowerless  Flour  Garden. 


25 


there  were  delicate  forms  like  grasses  in  seed,  all 
looking  like  spun  glass.  The  largest  kind  of 
common  mould,  which  you  may  see  in  Fig.  5,  is 
not  so  beautiful  as  these  I  have  just  described, 
but  it  shows  very  well  the  way  the  fungi  grow 


FIG.  5. — MOULD. 

(Muc&r.) 
a,  Stalk  ;  6,  same  opened ;  c,  outer  skin  broken,  and  spores  scattering. 

and  form  their  seed,  and  then  sow  themselves. 
This  plant  is  easily  seen  with  the  naked  eye, 
but  looked  at  through  the  Child's  Microscope, 
you  see  a  great  deal  more.  The  stalks  look  as 
they  do  in  Fig.  5,  a.  If  you  are  so  fortunate  as 


26  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

to  have  a  large  microscope,  and  watch  them  from 
day  to  day,  you  will  see  them  look  as  they  do  in 
Fig.  5,  b,  and  finally,  when  the  outer  skin  breaks, 
like  <?,  in  the  same  illustration. 

A  single  spoonful  of  flour  will  give  you  this 
wonderful  garden,  with  its  crop  of  yeast  plant,  if 
you  sow  the  seed ;  or,  if  you  trust  to  luck,  its  har- 
vest of  chance -sown  mould.  The  air  is  full  of 
these  spores  of  the  mould  plants,  and  wherever 
they  find  a  place  they  will  take  possession  of  it, 
and  grow  up  without  planting  or  cultivating,  as 
weeds  do.  You  can  be  certain  of  your  yeast 
crop,  because  you  have  sowed  it ;  but  you  must 
take  your  chances  with  the  mould.  You  are  al- 
most sure,  however,  to  find  in  any  saucer  of  paste 
the  different  kinds  described  and  pictured  in 
Figs.  3,  4,  and  5. 

The  toadstool,  whose  picture  (Fig.  1)  is  the 
first  of  all  the  fungi  given  here,  is  much  larger 
than  the  mould,  but  almost  as  simple.  It  is 
made  up  of  millions  upon  millions  of  little  cells 


A  Flowerless  Flour  Ga/rden.  37 

in  strings  or  in  flat  plates,  most  of  them  like  each 
other.  This  is  very  different  from  the  cells  in  the 
higher  kinds  of  plants ;  they  have  different  kinds 
of  cells  for  different  purposes,  as  we  shall  see 
after  a  while. 

It  is  worth  while  sometimes  to  get  away  from 
the  every-day  world,  and  learn  the  wonders  that 
are  to  be  found  within  the  fairy  ring  to  which 
the  microscope  admits  us. 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


CHAPTER   III. 
THE   FAIRY   FUNGI. 

THE  hill  -  sides  of  the  southern  part  of  France 
are  covered  with  vineyards,  where  the  luscious 
grapes  round  out  under  the  late  summer  sun- 
shine into  globes  of  delicious  sweetness.  When 
the  grapes  are  ripe,  the  peasants — men,  women, 
and  children — may  be  seen  gayly  trooping  to 
the  vineyards  to  pick  them  for  wine.  In  the 
famous  Steinburger  vineyard  the  pickers  are  all 
girls  about  eighteen  years  old.  Each  girl  has  a 
row  to  pick,  and  they  begin  together,  and  move 
forward  as  steadily  and  evenly  as  a  regiment  of 
soldiers.  With  their  gay  petticoats  looped  up  so 
that  they  may  not  brush  off  the  ripe  grapes,  and 
their  bright  stockings  and  mittens,  they  make  a 
very  pretty  picture  moving  along  between  the 


The  Fairy  Fungi.  29 

rows,  snipping  the  ripe  grapes,  and  letting  them 
drop  into  their  baskets.  When  the  baskets  are 
full  they  are  emptied  into  a  tub,  which  the  men 
lift  by  leathern  straps  and  carry  to  the  roadside 
press.  The  juice  which  comes  spurting  out  of 
the  press  is  placed  in  vats  or  barrels,  and  there 
left  to  ferment,  which  changes  the  juice,  or  must, 
into  wine.  When  the  cook  wants  her  bread  to 
ferment,  or  rise,  she  plants  it  with  yeast ;  but  the 
wine  has  nothing  planted  in  it,  and  yet  it  ferments. 
Pasteur,  the  great  French  chemist,  made  up  his 
mind  to  find  why  this  was.  He  was  convinced 
from  all  his  studies  in  fermentation  that  the  rea- 
son would  be  found  in  some  little  plant  which 
was  growing  in  the  juice  and  helping  itself  to 
whatever  it  needed  to  eat  or  to  breathe.  He  set 
to  work  to  find  out  where  the  plants  came  from 
which  turned  the  grape  juice  into  wine.  All  his 
experiments  are  so  fully  and  clearly  explained 
that  any  one  who  is  willing  to  take  the  pains 
can  try  them  for  himself. 


30  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

He  found  that  there  was  no  fungus  growing 
inside  the  little  closed  bag  (which  we  call  skin) 
in  which  the  pulp,  seed,  and  juice  of  the  grape 
are  sealed  up.  There  is  no  opening  anywhere  in 
a  sound  grape  through  which  spores  (which  are 
the  fungus  seed)  could  enter.  But  he  found  on 
the  skin  of  the  grape,  and  thickly  over  the  stem, 
little  plants,  something  like  yeast  and  something 
like  mould;  these  make  up  in  part  what  is 
called  the  bloom  of  the  grape.  He  put  some 
water,  with  these  plants  mixed  through  it,  into 
a  tightly  sealed  bottle,  and  into  another  he  put 
the  pure  juice  of  the  grapes  which  had  none  of 
the  little  plants  through  it,  and  then  waited  to 
see  what  would  happen.  In  a  few  days  the  wa- 
ter was  all  yeasty,  and  the  grape  juice  was  un- 
changed (Fig.  6).  He  tried  this  same  thing  over 
and  over  and  over  again,  and  in  various  ways, 
to  be  sure  that  he  was  right.  He  thus  found 
that  the  little  magician  that  turns  the  juice  into 
wine  is  always  waiting  at  the  door  of  the  sealed 


FIG.  6.— GRAPE  FUNGUS. 


The  Fairy  Fungi.  33 

chamber,  ready  to  work  its  miracle  as  soon  as  it 
can  reach  the  juice. 

The  case  is  very  different  with  beer.  Pasteur 
gave  a  great  deal  of  time  and  attention  to  finding 
out  why  so  many  millions  of  gallons  of  beer  were 
every  year  spoiled  in  the  making.  The  brewers 
could  not  tell  why.  They  prepared  their  wort 
in  just  the  same  way,  and  planted  just  the  same 
amount  of  yeast  into  the  good  beer  as  they  did 
in  what  turned  out  to  be  bad.  He  brought  that 
wonderful  microscope  of  his  to  bear  upon  the 
subject.  He  found  that  whenever  the  wort  was 
planted  with  yeast  which  had  certain  curious 
little  glassy  rods  mixed  through  it,  the  beer 
turned  sour.  The  brewer,  when  he  put  such 
yeast  as  this  into  his  wort,  was  planting,  along 
with  the  seeds  of  the  yeast  plant,  seeds  of  a 
troublesome  weed.  The  sour  beer  was  really 
only  a  very  queer  kind  of  a  liquid  garden,  grow- 
ing more  weeds  than  useful  plants. 

Vinegar  is  another  thing  made  by  these  little 


34 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


fairy  fungi.  The  cider  out  of  which  it  is  made 
is  set  away  in  a  cask  to  ferment.  The  spores 
that  work  the  change  in  this  case  are  floating 


FIG.  7. — POTATO  FUNGUS. 
(Botrytis   infestans.) 

in  the  air,  and  manage  somehow  to  get  into  the 
open  cask.  Did  you  ever  notice  the  flakes  of 
muddy  -  looking  substance  at  the  bottom  of  a 
vinegar  cruet?  That  i$  the  mother,  the  little 
plant  that  has  made  the  cider  into  vinegar. 


Tfie  Fairy  Fungi. 


35 


These  are  some  of  the  useful  things  that  are 
done  by  the  fungi,  and  they  are  certainly  very 
valuable  services.  We  owe  to  them  our  bread 
and  wine  and  beer  and  vinegar.  But  they  are 
not  always  benevolent  fairies  by  any  means. 


FIG.  8.  —  LEAF  MILDEW. 


Sometimes  we  are  inclined  to  think  that  they 
are  at  the  bottom  of  pretty  much  all  the  mischief 
in  the  world.  If  they  were  not  sailing  about  in 
every  breath  of  wind,  getting  into  all  sorts  of 
places  where  they  are  not  wanted,  we  probably 


3Q  (J/ia/pters  on  Plant  Life. 

would  never  have  any  chills  and  fever  or  diph- 
theria, and  the  yellow  fever  would  not  sweep  off 
its  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands.  If  these 
little  floating  spores  did  not  get  into  every  crack 
and  cranny,  wounds  would  not  fester,  damp  linen 
would  not  mildew,  preserves  and  pickles  would 
not  mould,  milk  would  not  sour,  nothing  would 
spoil  or  ferment  or  decay.  There  is  an  old  prov- 
erb that  "  the  mother  of  mischief  is  no  bigger 
than  a  midge's  wing."  I  sometimes  wonder  if 
the  old-time  people  that  made  the  proverbs  did 
not  know  something  of  these  tiny  mischiefs  that 
only  seem  to  be  waiting  the  chance  to  work  their 
naughty  will. 

There  is  one  case  where  this  change  takes 
place  which  you  have  probably  often  seen. 
When  I  was  a  child  I  used  to  be  very  fond  of 
getting  from  the  woods  close  to  the  house,  or 
from  the  wood  -  pile,  bits  of  shining  wood  and 
bark,  which  we  called  "  fox  fire."  The  wood  was 
always  old  and  decaying,  and  we  thought  it  was 


The  Fairy  Fungi. 


37 


shining  because  it  was  dying.  But  really  the 
perishing  wood  was  covered  all  over  with  tiny 
mushrooms,  which  shone  with  a  light  something 
like  the  glimmer  of  a  fire-fly.  In  some  countries 
this  brightness  is  very  wonder- 
ful. In  Australia  people  have 
been  able  to  read  by  the  light 
of  a  shining  stump  overgrown 
with  luminous  fungi. 

Some  of  the  fungi  have  not 
even  the  manners  to  wait  until 
their  victims  are  dead.  They 
take  possession  of  living  plants  and  animals,  and 
never  rest  until  they  have  destroyed  them.  The 
disease  among  potatoes  called  the  potato-blight 
(Fig.  7),  of  which  we  hear  so  much,  is  caused  by 
the  growth  of  a  little  fungous  plant  in  the 
mouths,  or  breathing  holes,  on  the  skin  of  the 
potato,  and  the  blight  and  mildew  (Fig.  8)  and 
smut  of  wheat  and  corn  and  rye  (Fig.  9)  are  all 
due  to  the  same  cause.  The  mouldy  look  upon 


FIG.  9.— RYE  SMTTT. 
(Cordyceps.) 


38  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

vine  leaves  is  nothing  else.  I  put  a  leaf  of  Vir- 
ginia creeper,  which  looked  whitish  and  ugly, 
under  the  microscope  one  day,  and  found  the 
whole  surface  covered  with  a  net- work  of  silvery 
threads,  with  a  wonderful  fruit  growing  upon  it. 
The  fruits  looked  like  peeled  oranges  surrounded 
with  threads  of  spun  sugar,  or  occasionally  like  a 
gigantic  blackberry  sparkling  with  crystals.  This 
was  only  a  common  mildew,  but  under  the  mag- 
nifier it  seemed  a  wonderful  garden,  growing  con- 
serves and  fairy  fruits,  and  was  beautiful  beyond 
description  (Fig.  10). 

The  silk -worm  is  attacked  by  a  fungous  plant 
(Fig.  11).  It  takes  possession  of  the  worm  just 
before  it  begins  to  spin  its  cocoon,  and  some  years 
ago  it  destroyed  such  multitudes  that  the  French 
silk  trade  was  seriously  threatened.  The  micro- 
scope was  again  brought  into  use,  and  the  cause 
of  the  trouble  discovered,  and  the  cure  effected. 

The  untiring  Pasteur  studied  up  this  and  other 
diseases  of  the  silk- worm  as  he  did  those  of  wine 


FIG.  10. — MILDEW  ON  VIRGINIA  CREEPER. 

(Erysiphe.) 


The  Fairy  Fungi. 


41 


and  beer,  and  helped  the  silk-worm  growers  to 
stamp  out  the  disease  when  it  appeared.  It  per- 
haps seems  a  small  thing  for  a  man  of  genius  like 


FIG.  11. — SELK-WOKM  FUNGUS. 
(Botrytis  bassiano.) 

Pasteur  to  give  his  whole  life  to  studying  these 
little  plants  through  the  microscope,  but  never 
was  a  life  more  helpfully  and  patriotically  spent. 
Hundreds  of  thousands  of  the  French  peasants 
depended  for  daily  food  and  shelter  upon  what 
they  earned  in  the  wine  and  beer  and  silk  trades, 
and  these  trades  Pasteur's  work  has  saved  from 


42  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

destruction  or  great  loss.  It  has  been  said  that 
his  work  with  the  microscope  has  saved  to 
France  more  money  than  the  awful  French  Rev- 
olution cost  her. 


Odd  Fish  in  the  Vegetable  World.  43 


CHAPTER  IV. 

ODD  FISH  IN  THE  VEGETABLE   WORLD. 

I  MUST  begin  by  telling  you  that  these  "  odd 
fish  "  are  very  little  fish  indeed,  so  small  that  you 
could  not  make  out  anything  about  them  unless 
you  used  a  magnifying-glass.  But  if  you  do,  you 
will  be  rewarded  by  seeing  some  very  wonderful 
things. 

Let  us  go  out  into  the  yard ;  it  does  not  make 
much  difference  whether  it  is  a  great  country 
garden,  with  beds  of  vegetables  edged  with  flow- 
ers and  threaded  by  pleasant  walks,  or  a  little, 
narrow,  paved,  cooped -up  city  yard,  we  will  be 
pretty  sure  to  find  what  we  want.  Every  wa- 
ter-butt and  horse-trough,  every  little  puddle  left 
by  the  rain  (if  it  has  stood  long  enough)  is  sure 
to  be  swarming  with  one  kind  or  another  of  these 


44  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

curious  little  creatures.  If  you  have  no  such  col- 
lections of  water,  look,  and  perhaps  you  will  find 
in  the  shady  corner  of  your  yard  a  wet,  slimy 
green  moss  coating  the  bricks.  This  you  will 
find,  if  you  examine  it  through  your  magnifying- 
glass,  to  be  made  up  of  thousands  and  thousands 
of  little  green  cells.  Each  of  these  is  one  of 
our  odd  fish  coiled  up  and  asleep.  I  call  them 
fish,  though  they  are  true  plants,  because  they 
live  in  the  water,  or  very  damp  places  where 
there  is  enough  water  for  them — though  it  would 
not  be  good  swimming  ground  for  larger  plants 
or  animals — and  they  go  swimming  about  seek- 
ing for  food,  every  now  and  then  settling  down 
to  the  bottom  as  if  they  were  tired  and  wanted 
to  go  to  sleep. 

One  of  the  commonest  of  these — it  has  a  long 
Latin  name,  which  means  "first-berry"  -is  also 
one  of  the  most  interesting.  The  first  time  I 
ever  saw  it  I  remember  my  astonishment.  I  took 
about  a  teaspoonful  of  water  out  of  a  little  stag- 


Odd  Fish  in  the  Vegetable  World. 


45 


nant  pool  that  the  rain  had  left  in  the  garden, 
and  poured  it  into  the  crystal  of  a  watch.  I  put 
it  under  my  microscope  and  looked  in.  The  lit- 
tle round  watery  world  under  my  eye  was  all 
alive  with  busy  creatures,  dashing  here  and  there 


B 


FlG.  12.— FiRST-BERRY  FlSH. 

A,  moving;  dd,  cilia;  J5,  still;  (7,  multiplying;  Z),  red  snow-plant; 
-E",  baby  berries  swimming  freely. 

and.  every  where.  Among  other  things  I  found 
my  queer  little  first-berry  fish.  He  was  long  and 
pear-shaped,  and  moved  small  end  foremost.  I 


46  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

could  not  see  how  he  managed  it,  but  I  knew 
where  to  look  to  find  his  swimmers  (Fig.  12,^4). 
Coming  out  from  the  two  little  peaks  at  the 
small  end  there  were,  I  knew,  two  fine  threads 
called  cilia  (d  d)  —  meaning  eyelash,  because  of 
their  shape.  With  these  he  whipped  through  the 
water,  moving  himself  along  just  as  you  do  with 
your  arms  when  you  are  swimming.  For  a  while 
I  could  not  see  the  lashes,  they  were  moving  so 
fast,  but  after  a  long  time  one  of  the  funny  little 
fellows  seemed  to  get  tired,  he  "  slowed  up,"  and 
then  the  eyelashes  could  be  seen.  You  see  in 
the  picture  (Fig.  12,  A)  the  berry -fish  moving; 
dd  are  his  swimmers.  At  B  he  is  coiled  up  at 
rest.  If  you  were  to  keep  th^rn  and  look  at  them 
every  little  while  for  several  days  as  I  did,  you 
would  see  a  change  taking  place  inside  the  still 
cell,  JB.  The  whole  inner  part  divides  in  two, 
then  each  of  these  halves  divide  again,  and  so 
on  till  the  inside  jelly  is  divided  up  into  smaller 
parts ;  each  one  of  these  parts  rounds  up  till  the 


Odd  Fish  in  the  Vegetable  World.  47 

whole  inside  of  the  berry  looks  like  a  cluster  of 
small  berries  (Fig.  12,  C)  enclosed  in  the  outer 
shell.  Finally,  the  old  shell  softens  and  melts 
away,  and  then  instead  of  one  mother  berry  you 
have  a  whole  flock  of  baby  berries  that  scatter 
themselves,  and  soon  go  lashing  about  merrily 
through  the  water  like  fish  again.  At  D,  in  the 
same  figure,  you  may  see  another  member  of  the 
family  of  berry-fish,  only  he  lives  in  the  snow  in 
Greenland  and  other  far  north  countries.  In- 
stead of  being  green,  this  snow-plant  is  red,  and 
the  millions  of  them  scattered  through  the  snow 
give  to  it  a  bright  red  color.  I  think  you  must 
have  read  something  of  the  wonderful  red  snow 
in  the  Arctic  regions,  and  now  you  know  why 
it  is  so. 

In  the  same  little  spoonful  of  water  you  may 
be  so  fortunate  as  to  find  another  moving  thing 
that  looks  like  an  eel  as  it  goes  wriggling  about 
among  the  other  fish.  These  are  really  stiff 
spirals,  like  a  furniture  spring,  only  longer  and 


48 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


narrower.     They  move  in  several  different  ways ; 

in  some  one  end  swings  backward  and  forward 

like  the  pendulum  of 
a  clock,  others  wriggle. 
The  movement  that 
seems  to  be  wriggling 
is  really  the  turning 
round  and  round  of 
the  spiral,  just  as  a 
spinning-top  does.  Try 
the  movement  with  a 
corkscrew  held  in 
place  at  tip  and  han- 
dle and  quickly  spun 
around,  and  you  will 
see  for  yourself  (Fig. 
13).  Some  of  the 
forms  here  (Fig.  1 3,  #) 
are  the  little  mischief- 
K  ,,  makers  of  which  I  was 

A,  D,  vibrios ;  B,  0,  E,  G,  spirillums ; 

IT,  bacteria.  telling  you  in  the  last 


Odd  Fish  in  the 

chapter,  which  cause  meat  to  decay  and  spoil — 
bacteria  they  are  called.  A  great  many  of  them 
together,  turning  round  in  this  way,  naturally  get 
tangled  up  into  lumps.  When  one  of  these  is 
placed  on  a  sheet  of  paper,  the  separate  little 
wrigglers  often  form  a  star-shaped  figure  which 
is  very  pretty. 

If  you  have  ever  spent  any  time  at  the  sea- 
shore, you  must  have  seen  queer  lumps  of  jelly 
in  the  sand,  and  been  told,  if  you  were  interested 
enough  to  ask,  that  they  were  jelly-fish.  The 
vegetable  world  has  its  jelly-fish  too.  Some- 
times floating  on  ponds,  sometimes  on  damp  or 
mossy  ground,  lumps  of  a  clearish  jelly  will  be 
found,  very  curious  to  look  at  and  very  myste- 
rious in  their  coming.  They  are  really  a  kind  of 
water-plant.  All  through  the  mass  are  rows  of 
round  cells,  like  strings  of  beads,  coiled  up  in 
great  masses,  and  held  together  by  the  jelly  that 
oozes  out  of  them.  A  new  colony  is  formed  by 

the  jelly  melting   up  enough  to  let  the  strings 

4 


50  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

of  cells  get  free;  they  begin  wriggling,  and  at  last 
get  oat  of  the  jelly  prison,  grow  and  spread,  and 
finally  make  a  new  colony  like  the  one  they  came 
from.  Sometimes  a  quantity  of  the  dried -out 
jelly  will  be  lying  on  a  brick  walk  or  some  such 
place.  No  one  would  notice  it  in  this  state. 
With  the  first  rain,  however,  the  cells  all  swell 
up,  and  a  lump  of  jelly  appears  as  if  by  magic. 
These  are  sometimes  called  "fallen  stars"  by 
country  people,  who  think  they  must  have  fallen 
from  the  sky. 

Your  watch-glass  pond  may  perhaps  contain 
another  form  which  is  interesting  to  watch  with- 
out a  magnify  ing-glass,  but  far  more  interesting 
with  one.  It  looks  to  the  naked  eye  like  a  little 
globe,  not  so  large  as  a  pin's  head,  of  nearly  clear 
green  glass,  with  tiny  specks  of  a  deeper  green 
through  it.  It  goes  rolling  over  and  over  and 
around  in  the  water,  not  very  fast,  but  pretty 
much  all  the  time.  Now  let  us  put  him  under 
the  microscope  and  see  what  he  looks  like.  We 


Odd  Fish  in  the  Vegetable  World.  51 

see  globes  of  a  deep  green  enclosed  in  a  lacy  net- 
work of  a  beautiful  pale  green  color  (Fig.  14,^1), 
B  shows  this  net -work  still  more  magnified. 
You  can  see  without  my  telling  you  that  the 
net-work  is  made  up  of  hundreds  and  hundreds 
of  our  little  berry-fish  fastened  together  by  clear 
bands  of  a  jelly-like  material.  The  smaller  and 
greener  balls  within  the  net  are  new  colonies 
growing  up  to  full  size.  When  this  happens,  the 
outer  globe  bursts  and  lets  the  inner  globes  free, 
and  so  it  goes  on,  each  globe  having  globes  with- 
in it  like  a  Chinese  ball  puzzle. 


B 


FIG.  14. 
A,  colonies  of  first-berry  fish ;  B,  part  of  the  same  magnified. 


52  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

I  wish  I  could  give  you  a  peep  through  my 
large  microscope  at  the  last  kind  of  fish  I  am 
going  to  show  you.  These  are  a  sort  of  vegeta- 
ble shell-fish,  and  are  found  in  all  kinds  of  water- 
salt,  fresh,  and  brackish.  In  the  mountain  brooks 
near  West  Point  they  grow  in  such  multitudes 
that  the  beds  of  the  streams  are  covered  about 
one-quarter  of  an  inch  with  them.  Every  stone 
and  stick  and  twig  is  glistening  with  them.  In 
other  places  they  have  been  found  in  such  quan- 
tities that  the  beds  of  rivers  and  the  mouths  of 
harbors  have  been  choked  up  with  them.  The 
numbers  you  may  get  some  idea  of  when  I  tell 
you  that  it  takes  sixteen  millions  of  some  kinds 
to  fill  a  box  one  inch  square,  and  these  are  a 
large  kind. 

Nothing  in  nature  is  more  wonderful  and 
beautiful,  when  magnified,  than  these  shells. 
They  are  of  the  purest  glass,  of  every  imaginable 
shape,  ornamented  with  the  most  delicate  pat- 
terns. No  drawing  can  give  you  an  idea  of 


Odd  Fish  in  the  Vegetable  World. 


53 


FIG.  15. — VEGETABLE  SHELL-FISH. 

Ay  on  stem  ;  B,  fastened  by  corners :  a,  top  view ;  &,  2,  shell  inside  the 
band ;  (7,  top  of  new  box ;  D,  side  view  of  box. 

their  great  beauty.  Here  are  a  few  of  the  shells. 
Some  of  them  grow  on  stems  (Fig.  15,  A)  ;  some 
are  attached  together  by  their  corners  and  live 
in  long  chains  (^) ;  others  are  free.  They  are  of 


54  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

all  sorts  of  queer  shapes.  Like  the  "  first-berry," 
they  move  about,  but  their  movements  are  a 
curious  jerking  advance  and  retreat,  which  seems 
to  have  no  sense  in  it. 

Now  look  at  Fig.  15,  0.  You  see  it  looks  some- 
thing like  a  three-cornered  box,  C  being  the  top 
and  D  the  side  view;  the  upper  shell  is  fitted 
over  the  lower,  just  as  the  lid  of  a  pill- box  fits 
over  the  lower  part.  Inside  is  the  jelly-like  body 
of  the  plant.  Like  others  of  this  family,  the 
plant  grows  by  the  enlarging  of  living  cells, 
which  then  divide  up  into  two.  This  is  easy 
enough  in  soft  cells,  but  of  course  if  it  enlarged 
as  we  saw  it  do  in  the  "first-berry,"  the  beau- 
tiful glass  shell  would  be  broken  to  pieces. 
Now  pay  close  attention  while  I  try  to  explain 
how  these  curious  little  things  manage  to  grow, 
and  save  their  shells  too.  The  jelly  inside  gets 
bigger;  that  pushes  the  lid  up  and  partly  off  the 
bottom  of  the  box.  To  keep  any  of  the  jelly 
from  being  unprotected,  a  band  like  a  flat  brace- 


Odd  Fish  in  the  Vegetable  World. 


55 


let  of  glass  covers  the  edges,  and  grows  wider  as 
is  needed.  All  this  has  been  very  carefully 
watched  under  the  microscope.  The  jelly  inside 
divides  into  two  parts,  and  then  one  part  of  the 
jelly  takes  the  old  lid,  and  the  other  the  old 
bottom  for  new  lids,  and  inside  the  band  each 
builds  itself  half  a  new  shell  (Fig.  15,^,  U)m  So 


FIG.  16. — VEGETABLE  SHELL-FISH. 

A,  B,  C,  successive  stages  in  the  formation  of  seed  shell ; 

a,  old  shells ;  6,  seed  shells. 

two  new  shell -fish  are  made  out  of  one;  when 
this  is  done  the  band  falls  off,  whole  or  in  pieces, 
and  leaves  them  each  ready  to  begin  this  over 
again. 

Sometimes  two  of  the  shells  come  near  to  each 


56  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

other,  and  surround  themselves  with  a  kind  of 
jelly  (Fig.  16,  A).  After  a  while  in  the  midst  of 
this  jelly  appears  a  curious-looking  shell  (Fig.  16) 
entirely  different  from  the  ones  it  comes  from. 
This  is  the  seed  of  new  shell-fish  plants,  like  those 
which  produced  it  (Fig.  16,  D,  shells  a  a,  seed 
shell,  V). 

In  the  ages,  long  ago,  when  the  world  was 
making,  these  little  plants  had  a  good  time  of  it. 
They  grew  in  such  quantities  that  their  shells 
have  made  great  beds  of  earth.  The  city  of 
Richmond,  in  Virginia,  is  built  upon  such  a  bed, 
and  millions  upon  millions  of  them  can  be  found 
in  a  handful  of  the  common  earth. 


Lichens.  5? 


CHAPTER  V. 
LICHENS. 

IT  is  not  uncommon  to  find  among  animals  a 
curious  kind  of  house -keeping  arrangement,  by 
which  they  live  together,  each  one  helping  to 
keep  up  the  establishment,  and  all  having  equal 
rights.  Oftener,  however,  we  find  one  animal 
quietly  settling  down  upon  another,  expecting  to 
be  supported  in  idleness.  This  is  not  only  true 
of  animals ;  it  is  equally  true  of  plants.  Some  of 
the  very  smallest  of  them  are  as  proud  and  inde- 
pendent as  the  largest ;  they  busy  themselves  all 
day  extracting  their  food  out  of  the  earth  and 
air,  earning  their  own  living  in  a  most  praise- 
worthy way,  and  ready  to  lend  a  helping  hand 
to  others.  The  "dead-beats"  of  the  vegetable 
world  are  most  commonly  found  among  the  lower 
classes — the  fungi. 


58  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

You  remember,  in  studying  the  fungi  we  found 
that  one  thing — the  principal  thing — which  mark- 
ed their  difference  from  the  green  plants  was  that 
they  are  obliged  to  feed  on  what  has  been  some 
time  a  living  substance,  whether  vegetable  or 
animal.  The  yeast-plant  and  moulds  and  mush- 
rooms feed  upon  dead  material,  that  which  is  no 
longer  alive ;  but  there  are  other  fungi  that  prey 
upon  living  things — some  of  these  we  have  al- 
ready studied  (Figs.  6,  7,  11)  in  the  chapter  on 
the  fairy  fungi — such  as  the  grape  fungus,  the 
potato  blight,  and  the  silk- worm  fungus.  These 
forms  of  fungus  life  seem  in  most  cases  to  be  a 
kind  of  disease.  But  there  are  still  other  forms 
which  are  even  more  curious. 

Have  you  not,  hundreds  of  times,  in  the  woods 
noticed  how  old  tree  trunks  and  twigs,  particu- 
larly dead  ones,  were  covered  with  a  curious 
crust,  sometimes  gray  and  sometimes  greenish  in 
hue  ?  Occasionally  you  have  found  them  bright 
orange,  and  again  holding  up  coral-red  cups  to 


Lichens.  59 

the  sun  and  rain.  These  are  not  mosses,  as  you 
often  hear  them  called.  In  fact,  they  have  no 
correct  ordinary  name,  and  so  get  their  botanical 
name  of  lichens  oftener  than  any  other. 

One  of  the  most  singular  things  in  the  study 
of  all  plants  are  these  same  plants,  and  it  took  a 
great  many  long  years  of  study  to  find  out  their 
ways.  A  lichen  is  really  a  peculiar  kind  of  a  fun- 
gus, growing  on  and  sucking  its  nourishment  out 
of  a  little  green  water-plant,  which  manages  to  N 
support  both  itself  and  its  "  dead-beat "  neighbor. 
For  a  long  time  the  little  green  cells  that  flour- 
ished so  bravely  in  the  clutch  of  the  lazy  giant 
of  a  fungus  were  thought  to  be  the  fruit  of  the 
fungus.  After  long  studying  and  examining, 
some  keen -sigh  ted  botanist  saw  that  the  green 
cells  were  no  more  nor  less  than  our  little  "  first- 
berry,"  being  eaten  out  of  house  and  home  by 
his  lazy  visitor.  He  collected  the  green  cells  of 
the  plant,  and,  to  test  the  matter,  he  sowed  them, 
and  watched  what  became  of  them;  they  grew 


60  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

apace,  and  when  they  came  to  move  about  he 
found  that  he  was  not  mistaken :  they  were,  sure 
enough,  the  "  first-berry." 


FIG.  17.  —LICHEN  MAGNIFIED. 

a,  fungus  ;  6,  host. 

You  see  in  Fig.  17  how  the  twining  arms  of 
the  lichen,  a,  embrace  the  "first-berry,"  b,  and 
push  their  way  into  the  very  heart  of  the  cell  to 
take  away  its  food.  For  some  reason  it  does  not 
overpower  and  kill  its  little  host  —  possibly  it 
may  in  some  unknown  way  pay  board  in  serv- 
ices, but  nobody  has  ever  found  it  out  if  such 
is  the  case — though  it  is  a  fact  that  some  of  the 


Lichens.  61 

tiny  plants  so  preyed  upon,  instead  of  being  hin- 
dered in  their  growth,  seem  to  be  rather  stimu- 
lated by  the  demand  upon  them. 

All  these  lower  forms  of  life,  including  the 
fungi,  odd  fish,  and  lichens,  are  called  by  a  Latin 
name  meaning  that  the  plant  is  all  leafy.  They 
have  no  distinct  stems  and  roots,  they  all  seem  to 
be  just  something  like  a  leaf.  In  lichens  this 
leafy  crust  is  called  a  thallus — it  has  no  correct 
common  name. 

The  thallus  creeps  on  chips  of  decaying  wood? 
bark,  or  small  branches,  diving  down  into  the 
cells  of  the  green  plant  below  to  feed  itself,  and 
sending  up  into  the  air  the  little  cup  or  heads, 
which  are  its  fruit.  Some  of  the  gray,  woolly 
lichens  that  cover  twigs  growing  near  the  sea- 
shore, or  down  in  mossy  dells,  have  what  seem 
like  stems ;  but  they  are  not  true  stems,  the  cells 
inside  are  different  from  stem  cells  (Fig.  1 8)  and 
like  those  of  the  leaves.  We  have  to  learn,  in 
studying  nature,  "not  to  judge  according  to  ap- 


62 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


FIG.  18. — WOOLLY  LICHEN. 

(Usnea  barbata.) 


pearance,  but  to  judge  righteous  judgment."     It 
is  by  the  lives  of  these  little  creatures,  not  by 


Lichens.  63 

their  mere  outward  appearance,  that  we  know 
their  real  character. 

Lichens  are  good  things  to  study  in  winter,  for 
you  can  find  them  when  other  plants  are  having 
their  long  sleep.  They  grow  everywhere,  and  on 
pretty  much  everything  that  has  crevices  in  which 
their  host  can  find  moisture. 

The  "  first-berry  "  is  by  no  means  the  only  one 
of  the  "  odd  fish  "  which  are  hosts  to  the  lichens. 
The  vegetable  jelly-fish,  the  red  snow-plant,  and 
others  answer  the  same  purpose.  But  whatever 
the  host  is,  you  cannot  help  feeling  that  he  is 
ill-used.  Sometimes  one  is  almost  smothered 
in  the  embrace  of  his  ungrateful  visitor  and 
guest;  sometimes  another  is  fairly  sucked  diy 
by  these  sponges;  but  the  plucky  little  things 
manage  to  live  somehow  and  bear  the  burden 
of  life. 

Some  of  the  lichens  contradict  the  old  saying 
that  "  beggars  must  not  be  choosers,"  for  they 
will  not  live  on  any  host  but  a  particular  one 


64 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


which  suits  them.  Others  are  not  so  particular, 
and  will  take  to  any  one  which  will  afford  them 
nourishment. 

Occasionally,  among  the  hard  dry  growths  that 
are  the  commonest  forms  of  lichens,  we  find  a 
kind  that  is  like  cold,  clammy  flesh.  It  grows  in 
cushion-like  masses.  In  these  forms  the  poor 
little  host  is  scattered  in  bunches  through  the 


FIG.  19. 

a,  the  fungus ;  &,  the  host ;  c,  the  spore  cup  from  which  the  spores  are 

escaping ;  d,  spores. 

(Cdllema.) 


Lichens. 


65 


fleshy  mass,  or  runs  through  it  like  strings  of 
glistening  beads  (Fig.  19,  5). 

Lichens,  like  some  plants  higher  in  the  scale 
of  life,  grow  from  spores.  These  produce  new 
plants  as  seed  do,  but  they  are  not  seed.  Seed, 


^ 


FIG.  30.— ENCRUSTING  LICHEN. 
(Ptirmelia.) 

as  you  will  see  when  we  come  to  them,  are  always 
made  by  the  partnership  of  two  entirely  different 
cells  combining  together.  Spores  are  more  like 
a  little  bud  growing  out  of  the  plant,  and  when 
it  is  ripe,  getting  loose  from  the  place  where  it 

5 


66  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

grew,  and  being  scattered  on  the  ground  by  the 
wind  or  the  rain.  They  grow  usually  in  some 
sort  of  cup,  which  holds  them  safely  till  they  are 
ripe  and  free  (Figs.  19  and  20). 

It  would  not  seem  that  such  sturdy  little  beg- 
gars and  persistent  sponges  would  be  of  much 
use  in  such  a  busy  world  as  this ;  and  yet  if  it 
were  not  for  them  a  large  part  of  the  world 
would  be  without  inhabitants.  All  Lapland,  you 
know,  is  inhabited  by  people  whose  living  de- 
pends on  the  reindeer.  In  our  climate  we  can 
scarcely  imagine  how  people  could  depend  so  upon 
any  one  kind  of  animal.  But  the  people  there 
have  nothing  else;  they  eat  the  flesh,  and  drink 
the  milk  of  the  reindeer ;  their  clothes  are  made 
from  his  skin,  their  tools  are  carved  out  of  his  ant- 
lers ;  his  sinews  supply  thread,  his  bones,  soaked  in 
oil,  they  burn  for  fuel.  Living,  he  is  his  master's 
horse  and  mule,  carrying  him  and  his  belongings 
from  place  to  place.  The  Laplander's  whole 
mode  of  life  depends  upon  these  tiny  little  plants 


PIG.  21. — REINDEER  LICHEN, 
(Cladonia.) 


Lichens.  69 

(Fig.  21),  for  when  the  reindeer  have  devoured  all 
that  is  growing  in  one  place,  the  Laplanders  move 
bag  and  baggage,  where  they  can  find  some  more. 

In  the  short,  hot  summers  the  reindeer  can  get 
the  fresh  shoots  of  certain  trees,  but  in  winter 
there  is  nothing  but  the  lichen  under  the  snow. 
Besides  being  the  only  food  they  can  get  to  eat, 
it  seems  to  be  necessary  to  them.  When  reindeer 
are  brought  to  temperate  climates  as  a  show,  it  is 
found  necessary  to  feed  them  on  these  lichens  or 
something  of  the  kind,  or  they  will  not  keep  well 
and  hearty.  As  food  the  lichen  has  another  ad- 
vantage, that  it  takes  a  great  while  to  digest,  and 
a  meal  will  last  for  a  long  time,  enabling  the 
reindeer  to  take  long  journeys  over  the  frozen 
snow-covered  ground  without  a  fresh  meal. 

There  is  one  kind  of  lichen  which  grows  in 
great  quantities  in  some  parts  of  the  far  north 
countries.  This  is  called  the  tripe  de  roche,  or 
rock  tripe,  because  it  looks  a  little  like  tripe  and 
because  it  can  be  eaten  by  men.  Arctic  travel- 


70  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

lers,  caught  by  the  ice  in  these  northern  countries, 
have  been  kept  alive  for  weeks,  when  they  had 
no  other  food,  by  these  lichens.  It  is  one  form 
or  other  of  these  tiny  plants,  which  we  scarcely 
even  notice,  that  saves  great  regions  of  Arctic 
country  from  being  a  desolate  no-man's  land  from 
end  to  end. 


Plants  <md  Animals — Their  Difference.         71 


CHAPTER  VI. 
PLANTS  AND  ANIMALS— THEIR  DIFFERENCE. 

IF  the  question  were  put  to  you  suddenly, 
"  What  is  the  difference  between  a  plant  and  an 
animal?"  how  do  you  think  you  would  answer? 
Stop  a  minute,  and  think.  Do  not  be  satisfied 
with  saying  that  a  plant  has  leaves,  and  an  ani- 
mal has  not.  Look  deeper,  and  answer  more 
thoughtfully.  There  are  many  plants  which  have 
no  leaves,  nor  roots,  nor  flowers ;  this  you  know 
very  well,  for  the  only  plants  we  have  examined 
so  far  have  had  none  of  these  things,  and  there 
are  some  animals  which  seem  to  have  all  of 
them,  as  you  may  see  by  looking  at  Figs.  22 
and  22#.  In  some  cases  they  are  so  much  alike 
(Figs.  23  and  24)  that  it  has  taken  the  most 
careful  study  to  decide  whether  they  are  plants 
or  animals. 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


FIG.  22. — ANIMAL  SEAWEED. 

(Plumularia. ) 


Look  up  into  the 
bright  blue  sky,  and 
then  down  at  the  solid 
earth  beneath  your  feet 
—you  do  not  find  any 
difficulty  in  telling, 
without  taking  a  mo- 
ment to  think,  which  is 
sky  and  which  is  earth ; 
but  if  you  are  so  happy 
as  to  live  in  the  wide 
open  country,  or  near 
the  sea,  or  on  a  lofty 
hill,  look  off  and  off  and 
off  until 


you  see 
only  the  delicate  blue  haze  like 
smoke  which  divides  the  heavens 
from  the  earth.  You  can  often  see 
the  same  thing  by  looking  from 
the  upper  windows  of  a  high  house. 


FIG.  22a. 
(Plumularia.) 


Plants  and  Animals — Their  Difference.         73 

You  will  find  that  many  and  many  a  time  you 
cannot  tell  which  is  earth  and  which  is  air. 

Just  so  it  is  in  the  world   of  nature.      You 
may  look  at  a  group  of  cows  standing  under 


FIG.  23.— ANIMAL. 

(Coral  polyps.) 

the  trees,  or  watch  the  merry  little  grasshoppers 
skipping  about  in  the  weeds,  or  catch  a  bee  at 
his  early  drink  in  a  morning-glory  bell,  and  you 
would  laugh  if  anybody  asked  you  if  you  could 
tell  the  animal  from  the  plant.  But  get  far 
enough  away  from  these  common  things,  and 
study  the  animals  and  plants  that  need  your 
microscope  to  see  them,  and  you  would  find 
things  so  much  alike  that  you  could  not  tell 


74 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


which  was  which.  Many  of  these  plants  have 
no  roots  nor  leaves,  no  flowers  nor  seed,  and 
many  of  the  animals  have  no  heads  nor  legs, 


FIG.  24. — VEGETABLE. 

(Meserribryanthemum. ) 


no  eyes,  nor  mouths,  nor  stomachs.  In  Fig.  25, 
a  is  a  plant,  and  b  is  an  animal.  Now  how  do 
you  suppose  anybody  knows  this?  People  who 
study  these  things  do  not  guess — they  know. 


Plants  and  Animals — Their  Difference.         75 

The  real  difference  lies  in  what  these  tiny  little 
creatures  do,  not  at  all  how  they  are  formed. 

About  three -fourths  of  all  the  kinds  of  sea- 
weed, for  instance,  are  found  to  be  animal — not 
one  animal,  but  a  colony;  the  other  fourth  are 
vegetables.  All  these  used  to  be  considered  veg- 
etables ;  so  did  the  sponge,  and  the  coral,  and  the 
sea-anemones,  and  they  are  all  now  known  to  be 


FIG.  25. — WATER  PLANT  ANP  WATER  ANIMAL. 
(Diatom.)  (Foranimifer.) 

animals.  Every  time  you  play  the  game  of 
"Twenty  Questions"  you  have  to  think  and 
decide  whether  the  particular  thing  you  have 
chosen  is  "  animal,  vegetable,  or  mineral."  Have 
you  any  notion  what  makes  the  real  difference 
between  them? 


76  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

I  imagine  that,  sooner  or  later,  you  will  think 
and  say  the  difference  is  that  animals  can  move 
and  plants  cannot.  That  might  have  been  a  very 
sensible  conclusion  if  you  had  come  to  ifc  before 
you  had  studied  anything  about  the  curious  odd 
fish  in  the  vegetable  world.  It  is  not  correct, 
you  now  know,  for  plants  do  move,  some  of  them 
very  much  as  animals  do;  others,  and  the  greater 
number,  in  another  way:  which  all  seems  very 
wonderful,  and  which  I  want  to  talk  over  after  a 
while  in  the  chapter  on  Climbing  Plants. 

What  makes  the  real,  deep-down  difference  is 
this:  Plants  can  live  on  mineral  matters  alone, 
on  earth  and  water  and  air,  and  these  things 
they  can  change  into  their  own  flesh  and  blood, 
their  stems  and  sap  and  fruit.  Animals  can 
only  live  on  what  the  plants  have  already 
turned  from  dead  into  living  material.  We  need 
water — that  is  a  mineral — and  salt  and  air,  which 
are  minerals  too,  if  we  are  to  keep  alive  and 
well.  But  we  cannot  live  on  these  things  alone: 


Plants  and  Animals — Their  Difference.         77 

we  should  soon  die  if  we  had  no  food ;  and  all 
really  nourishing  food,  all  that  keeps  our  blood 
warm  and  makes  us  grow,  has  once  been  vegeta- 
ble. Not  one  bird  or  fish  or  animal,  not  one 
single  human  being,  could  ever  have  lived  on 
this  earth,  in  the  air  or  in  the  water,  if  the  plants 
had  not  come  first,  and  prepared  the  earth  for 
us  to  live  in. 

These  are  "  sure  enough  "  fairies  that  are  for- 
ever working  their  wonders  for  us.  The  roots, 
like  elves,  grope  down  in  the  earth,  and  gather 
its  treasures;  the  leaves  stretch  out  into  the  air, 
and  gather  its  riches,  and  out  of  what  they  have 
collected  they  weave  the  beautiful  flowers,  and 
delicious  fruits,  and  golden  grain. 

I  should  like  to  make  very  clear  just  the  way 
they  do  this ;  it  is  very  wonderful  and  beautiful 
to  study  how  they  work  their  spells.  First,  the 
root,  as  we  shall  see,  armed  with  its  little  helmet, 
bores  its  way  down  into  the  earth.  If  it  finds  no 
water  or  damp  earth  it  soon  wilts  and  dies,  but 


78  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

if  it  finds  a  wet  place  it  begins  to  soak  up  moist- 
ure. Besides  the  water,  it  sucks  up  all  the  parts 
of  the  earth  that  are  dissolved  in  the  water.  The 
water  it  must  have,  and  it  will  manage  to  live  a 
while  on  that  alone,  as  many  starving  men  have 
done;  but  it  cannot  live  so  very  long.  Poor 
ground  means  ground  that  has  little  or  no  plant 
food  in  it. 

You  know,  if  you  ever  did  any  gardening 
work,  that  you  can  stick  a  cutting  of  geranium 
or  begonia  into  pure  sand  that  has  no  nourish- 
ment at  all  in  it,  and  that  if  you  keep  it  well  wa- 
tered the  cutting  will  strike  out  roots  and  bear 
leaves.  This  is,  in  fact,  the  best  way  to  start  cut- 
tings, for  mould  is  a  little  apt  to  rot  the  stem, 
but  the  sand  preserves  it.  After  a  while  the 
baby  plant  is  tired  of  doing  nothing  but  sucking 
water,  and  cries  for  some  stronger  food.  Then 
you  must  put  it  into  rich  earth,  still  giving  it 
plenty  of  water.  The  roots,  like  the  baby's  stom- 
ach, will  at  first  be  satisfied  with  a  very  milk-and- 


Plants  and  Animals — Their  Difference.         79 

watery  diet,  but  after  a  while  it  must  have  a 
strengthening  soup. 

The  roots  bring  the  plant  a  good  deal,  but  the 
leaves  are  the  principal  feeders.  Every  leaf  and 
»tem  is  supplied  with  millions  of  little  mouths, 
which  are  usually  open,  breathing  in  the  air  and 
breathing  out  moisture  and  the  gases  it  cannot 


FIG.  26.— LIVERWORT  MOUTH  OR  ROOM. 

use.  These  mouths  bring  both  food  to  nourish 
and  air  to  sustain  the  plant.  A  fish  keeps  itself 
alive  by  sucking  the  water  it  lives  in  all  the  while 
through  its  gills.  It  gets  out  of  the  water  what- 
ever it  needs  —  air  and  some  food.  The  plants 
are  like  fishes;  their  water  is  the  great  ocean  of 
air  that  lies  on  the  surface  of  the  earth.  They 


80  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

draw  it  in  through  their  months,  take  out  of  it  all 
they  need,  and  then  breathe  the  rest  out  again. 
In  Fig.  26  you  see  a  piece  of  a  liverwort  leaf 
1 


FIG.  27.— PLANT  MOUTH. 

hh,  hollow  of  mouth  ;  H,  lips. 

(Iris.) 

cut  down  through  the  mouth,  and  in  Fig.  27, 
another  kind,  a  blue-flag.  In  the  next  chapter 
(Fig.  30,  &)  you  see  some  of  the  mouths  of  the 
corn-plant;  this  is  the  outside  view,  as  you  see 
your  own  mouth  in  your  face  when  you  look  in 
the  glass. 

Air  is  a  curious  mixture.  It  is  a  gas  made  of 
several  gases  stirred  together  as  you  stir  tea  and 
milk  and  sugar.  One  of  these  gases  is  called 


Plants  cmd  Animals — Their  Difference.         81 

oxygen  (don't  be  afraid  of  the  hard  names);  that 
is  what  keeps  us  alive.  I  won't  give  you  the 
name  of  the  next,  because  it  is  only  used,  like  the 
milk,  to  weaken  the  tea.  The  third  is  a  very  dis- 
agreeable and  dangerous  gas,  called  carbonic  add 
gas.  It  is  this  last  that  makes  your  head  ache  in 
a  crowded  room  or  car.  This  is  what  you  hear 
of  every  now  and  then  as  choke-damp,  which  suf- 
focates people  down  in  mines  and  deep  wells. 
It  is  this  which  comes  from  burning  charcoal, 
and  makes  it  sure  death  to  burn  it  in  a  closed 
room.  There  is  very  little  of  this  dangerous  stuff 
even  in  close  air.  Carbonic  acid  gas,  though  so 
poisonous,  is  made  up  of  two  things,  which  are 
very  good  and  perfectly  harmless  when  they  are 
separated — carbon  and  the  life-giving  oxygen. 
Carbon  is  coal,  or  something  like  coal.  United 
together,  these  two  harmless  things  make  a 
dreadfully  dangerous  one,  just  as  innocent  salt- 
petre, sulphur,  and  charcoal  unite  to  form  the 
deadly  gunpowder. 


82  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

Now  notice  how  beautifully  plants  and  ani- 
mals are  made  to  live  together  and  help  each 
other.  Animals  breathe  in  the  air,  and  help 
themselves  to  the  oxygen  which  keeps  them 
alive,  but  breathe  out  the  deadly  carbonic  acid 
gas.  Plants  breathe  in  the  air,  separate,  by  some 
wonderful  power  of  their  own,  the  carbonic  acid 
gas  into  carbon  and  oxygen,  help  themselves  to 
the  carbon  and  breathe  out  the  oxygen.  What 
plants  consume  we  throw  away  as  useless,  and 
what  plants  breathe  out  sustains  our  life.  That 
is  the  reason  why  the  country  is  apt  to  be  so 
much  more  healthy  than  the  city.  The  air  that 
is  poisoned  by  people  and  fires  becomes  purified 
by  plants. 

Unlike  the  fairies  of  the  story-book,  who  do 
all  their  good  deeds  by  night,  these  little  plant 
fairies  work  only  by  the  light.  The  sun  is  their 
master,  and  his  first  ray  is  their  call  from  sleep. 
They  set  to  work  in  a  minute,  separating  the 
dangerous  carbonic  acid  gas  into  carbon  and 


Plants  and  Animals — Their  Difference.         83 

oxygen;  and  while  they  use  the  carbon  and 
grow  by  it  as  you  do  by  your  food,  they  are 
giving  back  the  sweet  pure  oxygen  to  the  air. 
All  day  long  they  are  at  their  good  work;  but 
when  the  sun  sinks  behind  the  hills,  they  do  not 
need  any  sunset  gun  to  tell  them  their  time  of 
rest  has  come.  They  drop  work  at  once,  and 
drop  their  fairy  ways ;  they  begin  right  away  to 
behave  as  the  animals  do — to  breathe  in  oxygen 
and  breathe  out  the  hateful  carbonic  acid.  That 
is  the  reason  it  is  not  healthy  to  sleep  in  a  room 
with  flowers  at  night,  though  they  are  so  good  to 
have  in  the  daytime. 

We  owe  our  lives  to  the  plants — the  food  we 
eat,  the  pure  air  we  breathe,  as  well  as  much  of 
the  rain  that  falls  from  heaven.  They  are  min- 
istering angels,  and  the  loving,  tender,  heavenly 
Father  has  appointed  them  their  work  to  do — to 
beautify  the  earth  and  purify  the  air  under  the 
guidance  of  the  glorious  sun,  which  He  has  cre- 
ated and  which  He  keeps  in  its  appointed  path. 


84  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


- 


CHAPTER  YIL 
THE  THIRSTY  FLOWERS. 

FILL  a  glass  with  water,  and  let  a  piece  of 
common  tape  or  a  strip  of  muslin  hang  so  that 
its  lower  end  shall  dip  into  the  water,  and  then 
notice  it ;  the  liquid  creeps  slowly  but  surely  up 
the  strip.  If  the  end  which  you  have  in  your 
hand  is  dropped  on  the  table  beside  the  glass, 
the  goblet  may  be  entirely  emptied,  the  water 
running  up  over  the  edge  of  the  glass  before  it 
runs  down  again.  This  behavior  of  water  would 
seem  very  queer  if  we  had  not  noticed  something 
of  the  kind  all  our  lives.  It  is  caused  by  what 
is  called  capillary  attraction.  Whenever  one  part 
of  a  material  full  of  fine  openings  which  lead 
through  it  is  dipped  into  a  liquid,  the  fluid  runs 
through  the  whole  stuff,  even  if  it  has  to  run  up- 


The  Thirsty  Flowers.  85 

ward.  Try  a  lump  of  sugar:  put  one  corner  into 
your  cup  of  tea  or  hot  milk,  and  watch  it  soak 
the  lump  through.  The  burning  of  a  lamp  is  upon 
the  same  principle.  The  wick  serves  to  carry  the 
oil  from  the  globe  of  the  lamp  to  feed  the  flame. 
As  soon  as  the  oil  gives  out,  the  light  fades  and 
dies  away. 

Every  part  of  a  plant  needs  water ;  it  must  be 
close  around  every  little  cell.  These  cells  are  the 
tiny  queer- shaped  bags  full  of  liquid  that  are 
packed  close  together,  and  make  up  the  leaves, 
stems,  and  flowers  of  plants.  In  Fig.  28  you  see 
the  cells  of  a  leaf  of  geranium  flower,  and  one  of 
sorrel  or  sour  grass,  which,  if  you  are  like  the 
children  I  know,  you  have  many  a  time  eaten  to 
get  the  pleasant  sour  taste.  Well,  every  one  of 
these  tiny  cells  must  be  kept  wet  all  the  time,  or 
the  plant  will  die.  The  only  way  we  can  think 
of  that  water  could  get  up  into  the  leaves  and 
flowers  from  the  earth  is  by  capillary  attraction, 
as  it  runs  up  the  strip  of  muslin.  And  if  it  were 


86 


Chapters  on  Pla/nt  Life. 


not  for  this  singular  behavior  of  water,  the  only 
plants  in  the  world  would  be  those  that  grow  in 
the  seas  and  rivers  and  lakes.  The  land  would 
be  as  barren  as  the  desert  of  Sahara. 


FIG.  28.— CELLS. 
A,  leaf  of  geranium  flower  (Pelargonium) ;  B,  leat  of  sorrel  (Oxalis). 

Now  try  to  think  of  some  plant  with  all  the 
earth  away — a  tree,  for  instance — and  you  will 
see  that  it  is  a  sort  of  double  growth ;  that  there 
is  an  upside-down  tree  in  the  ground,  with  its 


The  Thirsty  Flowers.  87 

trunk  and  branches  and  twigs,  as  well  as  one 
above  the  ground.  The  underground  twigs  do 
not  bear  leaves,  but  each  one  of  them  wears  on 
its  head  a  little  cap  or  helmet  to  protect  the  ten- 
der growing  part  from  being  injured  as  it  pushes 
its  way  through  the  hard  earth.  The  most  im- 
portant parts  of  a  tree  are  those  that  seem  of  least 
consequence,  the  rootlets  and  the  leaves.  These 
are  to  the  tree  what  our  mouths  and  stomachs 
and  our  lungs  are  to  us ;  the  roots  are  the  feeders, 
and  the  leaves  the  breathing  apparatus  of  plants. 
As  the  underground  tree  grows,  the  tender 
little  roots  push  their  way  down  into  the  dark- 
ness and  cold  of  the  deep  soil;  they  find  their 
way  around  stones  and  through  great  clods  of 
earth,  anywhere  and  everywhere,  until  they  get 
their  little  noses  into  water  or  damp  earth,  and 
then  they  begin  to  suck.  Sometimes  it  is  only 
pure  water  that  they  take  up  from  the  earth,  but 
generally  it  is  a  sort  of  broth — water  with  plant 
food  dissolved  in  it. 


88  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

The  roots  and  stems  and  leaves  are  all  full  oi 
little  passageways  running  upward,  and  branch- 
ing and  dividing  until  they  reach  the  leaves. 
Fig.  29  shows  a  corn  stalk  cut  across.  You  see 
some  roundish  holes,  marked  a ;  these  are  the 
ends  of  tubes  that  run  through  the  stalk.  When 
the  corn  begins  to  grow,  take  a  stalk  about  two 
feet  highland  cut  it  across;  you  will  see  little 
white  spots  all  over  the  cut  place.  This  figure  is 


FIG.  29. — CORN  STALK  CUT  ACROSS. 
(Zw.) 

one  of  those  white  dots  magnified.     Figure  31 
is  the  same  dot  viewed  sidewise. 

When  these  tubes  come  into  the  leaves,  they 


The  Thirsty  Flowers. 


open  into  little  spaces  just  under  the  outside  skin 
of  the  leaf.  These  spaces  are  like  the  hollow  of 
a  mouth,  and  each  one  has  generally  two  lips  that 


^-4 

^ 

;  I 

M 

— 

te 

Mfe 

N^i 
#f 

% 

)M 

•? 
M 

-•?JT. 

) 

1 

I 
j 

1 

™  1 

1 

FIG.  30. — PLANT  MOUTHS. 

A,  corn  leaf  with  three  mouths;  B,  bean  leaf,  with  mouth  ;  C,  mouth 
seen  side  wise. 

(2M.) 

are  sometimes  open  and  sometimes  shut.   Through 
these  tiny  mouths  (Fig.  30)  the  plant  breathes. 


90  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

It  draws  in  air,  and  it  sends  out,  as  you  do,  a 
mixture  of  air  and  water.  If  you  want  to  know 
how  much  water  there  is  in  your  own  breath,  try 
holding  a  piece  of  cold  glass  before  your  mouth. 

Plants  are  not  wasteful  of  the  water  so  neces- 
sary to  their  lives.  What  they  do  not  use  they 
give  back  to  the  air  from  which  it  was  received, 
as  we  make  our  thank-offerings  to  God  for  what 
He  has  given  us.  The  roots  suck  up  the  water, 
and  each  little  cell  takes  a  drink  as  the  water 
passes  it,  and  hands  on  the  rest  to  the  cell  just 
above  it.  And  so  the  water  takes  its  course, 
supplying  each  thirsty  cell  with  drink  as  it  passes, 
spreading  through  every  part  of  the  plant  until 
it  reaches  the  little  mouths.  And  there  all  that 
is  left  is  breathed  out  in  a  fine  steam  which  you 
cannot  see  until  it  touches  some  cold  substances, 
and  is  turned  into  water  again  (Fig.  31). 

Some  one  who  wanted  to  know  exactly  how 
much  water  was  given  back  to  the  air  by  grow- 
ing plants,  carefully  examined  a  number  of  them, 


The  Thirsty  Flowers. 


91 


and  found  that  a  single  sunflower  plant  gave  off 
in  twelve  hours  a  pound  and  a  quarter — enough 
to  fill  nearly  to  the  brim  three  common  table 
goblets.  Another  plant,  the  wild  cornel,  was 
found  to  breathe  out  more  than  twice  its  own 
weight  of  water  in  a  day  and  a  night. 

In  order  to  find  out  what  parts  of  the  flowers 
were  the  principal  water-carriers,  a  deutzia,  one 
of  our  most  delicate 
and  beautiful  spring 
flowers,  which  you 
probably  know  by 
sight  if  not  by  name, 
was  put  into  some  very 
blue  water,  colored 
with  a  mixture  of  what 
is  called  aniline,  and 
in  a  little  while  every  vein  of  the  flower  was  a 
beautiful  dark  blue.  The  poor  little  blossom  was, 
however,  poisoned  with  its  dose,  and  wilted  away 
in  a  few  minutes. 


FIG.  31.  —  WATER  -  CARRYING 
TUBES.  SIDE  VIEW  OF  CORN- 
STALK TUBES. 

(Zea.) 


92  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

The  quantity  of  water  that  plants  breathe  off 
is  so  great  that  it  makes  an  entire  change  in  the 
climate  when  forests  are  cut  down.  Plants,  like 
grasses  and  small  weeds  that  grow  on  the  surface, 
of  course  do  not  make  the  same  difference,  for 
their  roots  only  go  down  a  little  way.  But  trees 
are  very  important :  unless  the  air  is  kept  damp 
by  the  sea  or  some  large  body  of  water,  it  de- 
pends very  much  upon  trees  for  its  moisture. 
Where  there  are  no  trees,  the  rain  that  does  fall 
sinks  into  the  earth,  and  runs  away  in  little  un- 
derground currents,  and  is  lost.  There  are  no 
deep  roots  to  stop  this  waste,  to  suck  up  the 
water,  and  restore  a  large  part  of  it  to  the  air. 

In  places  where  the  rainfall  is  frequent,  and 
the  air  is  always  kept  soft,  plants  may  be  as  lavish 
of  their  water  as  we  are  in  the  great  cities  where 
the  supply  never  fails.  Plants  growing  in  such 
places  very  often  keep  their  mouths  open  all  the 
time.  If  this  were  the  habit  of  those  which  grow 
in  very  dry  places,  they  would  soon  perish  of 


The  Thirsty  Flowers.  93 

thirst.  On  the  high  Western  plains  beyond  the 
Mississippi  only  a  few  things  are  able  to  live. 
Among  these  are  some  kinds  of  cactus  plants, 


FIG.  32.— CACTUS. 

which  you  have  probably  se(^  in  greenhouses  or 
as  window  plants  (Fig.  32).  The  reason  why  they 
manage  to  grow  such  bulgy  leaves  and  fat  stems 
where  there  is  so  little  moisture,  is  because  this 


94  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

plant  is  so  very  stingy  of  its  water.  It  hoards  it 
up  as  the  travellers  over  the  great  African  deserts 
do,  knowing  how  hard  it  will  be  to  get  more.  The 
roots  of  the  cactus  suck  up  every  drop  of  water 
they  can  find,  and  the  leaves  keep  their  millions 
of  little  mouths  tight  shut  so  as  to  hold  it  all. 
Only  such  plants  can  grow  on  these  plains  as  are 
able  to  do  with  very  little  water,  or  else  are  wise 
enough  to  hoard  up  all  they  can  get.  This  water 
we  have  been  talking  about  is  not  sap — that  is 
the  blood  of  the  plant — but  it  is  like  the  water 
we  drink,  and  which  not  only  helps  to  make  the 
blood,  but  keeps  all  of  the  parts  soft  and  moist 
so  that  it  may  live.  The  largest  part  of  every 
living  thing  is  water.  It  is  not  without  good 
reason  that  the  Bible  so  often  speaks  of  the 
Water  of  Life,  for  without  water  no  life  could 
exist  for  a  single  hour. 


Plants  Caught  Napping. 


CHAPTER   VIII. 
PLANTS  CA  UGHT  NAPPING. 

As  we  come  to  be  more  intimate  with  plants, 
and  know  all  about  their  doings  and  see  into 
their  daily  lives,  we  continue  to  find  things  which 
remind  us  of  animals.  Plants,  we  already  know, 
eat  and  drink  and  breathe  and  move.  Besides 
all  these  things,  they  sleep;  and  they  must  get 
their  sleep  regularly,  or  they  lose  their  health 
completely. 

Nowadays  inventors  spend  their  lives  trying 
to  find  out  useful  things — things  that  will  make 
life  easier  and  pleasanter:  such  things  as  steam- 
boats and  railroad  cars,  and  telegraphs  and  sew- 
ing-machines, and  a  thousand  others  of  the  same 
kind.  In  old  times  all  the  inventions  were  made 
to  compel  men  to  believe  this  or  that  religion  by 


96  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

the  use  of  ingenious  tortures.  There  was  no  end 
of  different  kinds  of  suffering  which  poor  miser- 
able people  who  had  their  own  ideas  on  religious 
subjects  had  to  suffer.  Among  these  was  the 
horrible  torture  of  keeping  people  awake  night 
and  day  till  they  died.  Such  dreadful  things 
are  ho  longer  practised  on  people  in  Christian 
lands;  but  many  and  many  a  poor  plant  dies 
and  makes  no  sign  from  just  this  cause. 

People  can  sleep  where  there  is  a  light  in  the 
room  ;  hardly  so  sweetly  and  soundly,  I  think,  as 
they  can  in  the  darkness;  still  they  can  go  to 
sleep  in  the  light.  But  plants  cannot.  Until 
the  darkness  comes  they  go  on  working  and 
working,  no  matter  how  tired  they  are,  till  the 
plucky  little  creatures  drop  in  harness  and  die. 
The  work  they  do,  I  have  already  told  you,  is  to 
separate  the  poisonous  carbonic  acid  gas  of  the 
air  into  two  useful  things — carbon  for  themselves, 
and  oxygen  to  keep  people  and  animals  alive. 
But  they  need  rest  as  much  as  you  or  I  do. 


Plants  Caught  Napping. 


97 


Working  night  and  day  is  too  much  of  a  strain, 
and  finally  their  health  breaks  down  and  they 
die. 

Many  plants  are  not  contented  merely  to  stop 
working.  That  does  not  give  them  all  the  rest 
they  need.  The  leaves  want  to  lie  down  or  to 
hug  close  to  each  other,  in  order  to  sleep  com- 
fortably and  rise  re- 
freshed. If  you  no- 
tice carefully  a  spray 
of  locust  leaves,  for  in- 
stance, by  daylight,  you 
will  see  it  look  some- 
thing like  this  (Fig. 
33).  I  drew  this,  one 
bright  August  day, 
just  as  it  grew  on  the 
tree.  The  leaves  are 
all  spread  abroad  to 

,    ,     ,,      T    1  ,  FIG.  33.— LOCUST  BRANCH 

catch  the  light  and  the  AWAKE 

breezes.      The    thou- 


98 


Cha/pters  on  Plant  Life. 


sand  little  mouths  are  open,  breathing  in  the  air. 
In  the  evening,  after  it  had  grown  dark,  I  went 
out  and  drew  the  same  spray  asleep  (Fig.  34). 

There  was  just  light 
enough  for  me  to  see, 
but  not  enough  to 
wake  the  locust  leaves. 
There  they  lay,  hugged 
up  to  keep  warm,  their 
little  mouths  pressed 
close  against  each  other. 
It  may  seem  as  won- 
derful to  you  as  it  did 
to  me  when  I  first 
learned  it,  that  all  your 
lives  the  plant  and 
trees  around  you  had 
been  going  to  sleep  and 
cuddling  up  in  this  way,  and  you  had  never  no- 
ticed or  known  it.  When  you  think  of  it,  it  is 
not  really  so  strange,  for  most  of  the  time  that 


FIG.  34.— LOCUST  BRANCH 
ASLEEP. 

(fiobinia.) 


Plants  Caught  Napping. 


99 


the  leaves  are  asleep  you  are  asleep  too,  and  any 
light  which  under  ordinary  circumstances  would 
show  them  to  you,  would  keep  them  from  going 
to  sleep.  In  order  to  see  these  sleeping  leaves 
you  would  have  to 
take  a  lantern  and  go 
out  after  it  was  dark, 
and  examine  sprays 
which  you  had  partic- 
ularly examined  by 
day,  to  see  just  the  dif- 
ference. 

The  young  leaves, 
like  young  babies, 
sleep  more  and  cuddle 
up  closer  than  the  older 
ones  do.  I  examined  a 
great  many  plants,  and 
found  no  other  very 
common  plant  more  in- 
teresting than  the  locust-tree. 


PLA« 


AWAKE. 


Some  wistaria 


100  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

leaves,  especially  the  young  shoots,  not  only  close 
up  but  turn  over  on  their  stems  to  get  their  rest. 
The  most  remarkable  plant 
of  all  that  I  examined  was  a 
mimosa-tree,  or  sensitive  plant, 
as  it  is  often  called  (Fig.  35). 
This  tree,  however,  grows  full 
thirty  feet  high.  In  Virginia, 
where  I  made  the  drawing,  you 
can  sit  and  watch  the  branches 
against  the  evening  sky;  and  as 
the  twilight  falls,  the  entire  tree 
seems  to  be  thinning  out  until 
it  looks  as  if  the  season  had 
gone  backward  and  we  were 
looking  at  the  tree  in  its  early 

FIG.  36.  — SENSITIVE   spring  dress  of  delicate  sprays 
PLANT  ASLEEP.-        (Fjg  35^      ft  puts  one  jn  mju(j 

of  Keats's  beautiful  line,  when  speaking  of  a  love- 
ly girl  going  to  sleep— 

"  As  if  a  rose  should  shut  and  be  a  bud  again." 


Plants  Caught  Napping.  101 

It  sometimes  happens  that  plants  which  usually 
close  their  leaves  when  they  sleep  are  very  heav- 
ily shaded  during  the  day.  When  this  is  the 
case  they  do  not  seem  to  be  much  affected  by  the 
darkness  of  the  night,  and  do  not  change  the  po- 
sition of  their  leaves.  It  would  seem  as  if  they 
had  been  half  asleep  all  day,  and  so  had  spoiled 
their  night's  rest.  Darwin  tells  us  of  a  plant 
which  he  says  he  watched  carefully,  and  for  two 
nights  after  having  been  violently  shaken  by  the 
wind  it  did  not  cuddle  down  to  sleep.  It  was 
probably  too  much  excited  to  rest  properly. 

This  movement  of  sleep  is  so  much  affected  by 
the  presence  or  absence  of  water,  which  you  re- 
member is  the  cause  of  all  vegetable  movement, 
that  if  the  ground  in  which  the  plant  grows  is 
allowed  to  get  very  dry,  or  the  air  becomes  ex- 
tremely parched  around  it,  it  makes  no  sleep 
movement  at  night.  The  "  touch-me-not "  and 
mallow  are  affected  in  this  way  by  drought. 
Mr.  Darwin  tried  to  see  how  long  a  little  plant 


102  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

he  had  from  Chili  would  live  without  water. 
He  watched  it  for  three  weeks  without  giving  it 
a  drop  to  drink.  Its  leaves  became  dry  and 
dusty,  so  that  some  of  them  would  drop  off  from 
the  stem  every  time  he  shook  the  pot.  The  earth 
about  the  roots  became  like  the  dust  on  a  sum- 
mer road.  The  leaves  that  remained  on  the  stem 
did  not  close  in  sleep  at  night.  Finally,  at  the 
end  of  twenty-one  days,  he  watered  the  earth  and 
sponged  off  the  dry  and  thirsty  leaves.  The  next 
morning  it  seemed  as  fresh  as  ever,  and  when 
night  came  it  nestled  itself  down  comfortably  to 
its  rest. 

Some  plants  will  go  to  sleep  if  they  can  make 
themselves  comfortable;  while  if  they  are  very 
much  chilled  by  exposure  to  the  cold  night  air 
they  will  not  make  a  sleep  movement.  There  is 
something  almost  human  in  all  these  freaks  of 
wakefulness  in  the  plant  world. 

In  some  plants  the  leaves  stand  up  to  go  to 
sleep,  as  horses  do ;  in  others  they  droop  down, 


Plants  Caught  Napping.  103 

or  lie   close  to  each  other  like  little  children. 
One  kind  of  clover  which  has  a  yellow  blossom 


2. 


FIG.  37. 


1,  YELLOW  CLOVER A,  awake;  B,  asleep. 

2,  COMMON  WHITE  CLOVER.  . .  A,  awake;  B,  asleep. 

(Trifolium.) 


sleeps  very  curiously  (Fig.  37) ;  it  has,  as  of  course 
you  know,  three  leaflets  on  each  stalk.  Each  of 
the  three  twists  itself  around  through  the  quar- 
ter of  a  circle,  turning  one  of  the  side  edges  to  the 


104  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

sky.  Two  of  the  leaflets  —  the  side  ones — face 
towards  the  north,  one  a  little  to  the  east  of  north, 
the  other  a  little  to  the  west.  The  middle  leaflet 
turns  sometimes  eastward,  sometimes  westward ; 
in  doing  so  it  twists  itself  over  so  as  to  protect 
its  own  upper  surface  and  one  "of  the  other  leaf- 
lets at  the  same  time.  The  common  white  clover 
also  sleeps  very  curiously. 

There  is  a  very  singular  plant  which  bears 
three  leaves  on  a  stem,  the  middle  one  being 
large,  and  the  other  two  long  narrow  leaflets 
which  stand  straight  out  from  the  stem  just  be- 
low the  bottom  of  the  large  central  leaf.  They 
look  like  a  pair  of  oars  poised  in  the  hands  of  a 
rower  when  he  is  waiting  to  dip  them  into  the 
water.  When  this  plant  goes  to  sleep  the  small 
stein  which  holds  the  leaf  stands  straight  up,  and 
the  leaf  turns  directly  down  flat  against  the  stalk. 
The  plant  hardly  looks  like  the  same  thing  awake 
and  asleep. 

Besides   the   sleep   movement   this  plant  has 


Plants  Caught  Napping. 


105 


some  wonderful  motions,  which  seem  to  be  with- 
out any  particular  reason,  and  to  come  generally 
from  change  of  temperature.  Mr.  Darwin  put 
the  stem  of  one  of  these  leaves  into  some  water 
cool  enough  to  be  pleasant  to  drink,  and  then 
changed  the  water  for  some  about  as  warm  as 
lukewarm  tea.  The  leaflets  began  to  move,  and 
in  a  minute  and  a  half  had  made  a  complete 
circle.  In  very  young  plants  of  this  kind  the 
leaflets  jerk  all  the  while,  very  much  as  a  baby 
kicks  its  legs  and  moves  its  arms,  without  having 
any  particular  reason  for  doing  it. 

When  leaves  get  sleepy  they  do  not  sink  stead- 
ily and  quietly  down.  There  is  nobody  to  take 
them  and  lay  them 
down  to  sleep  when 
they  feel  drowsy,  so 
they  go  off  by  them- 
selves in  a  slow  sort 
of  nodding  motion. 
Fig.  38  shows  the  path 


5  P.M.         5.30  P.M.  6  P.M.  6.3U  P.M. 

FIG.  38.— THE  PATH  OF  THE  NOD. 


106  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

that  one  of  these  little  sleepy  heads  moved  over 
before  it  went  off  sound  asleep. 

The  cause  of  all  these  movements  is,  as  we  shall 
see  when  we  study  the  movements  of  growing 
and  climbing  plants,  the  shifting  of  water  from 
cell  to  cell,  but  the  reason  for  them  is  the  same 
which  makes  two  little  children  sleeping  side  by 
side  draw  closer  together  when  they  feel  chilly, 
and  nestle  down  together  in  the  bed.  The 
warmth  of  their  bodies  then  is  not  lost,  but 
passes  from  one  to  the  other. 


liverworts.  107 


CHAPTER  IX. 

LIVERWORTS. 

ONE  beautiful  September  day  I  started  out, 
basket  in  hand,  to  hunt  for  some  curious  plants 
that  I  had  been  reading  about,  and  which  had  in- 
terested me  very  much.  I  had  often  noticed,  as 
you  have  probably  done,  curious  flat  leaves,  with 
curled-up  edges,  growing  on  damp  paving-stones 
or  around  a  spring,  clinging  close  to  the  stones  or 
wet  ground,  and  carpeting  them  with  a  mat  of 
rich  dark  green. 

As  soon  as  I  began  reading  about  the  liver- 
worts I  recognized  my  old  friends  at  once,  and 
was  anxious  to  see  them  again  now  that  I  knew 
something  about  their  ways.  A  friend  who  was 
interested  in  my  studies  promised  to  show  me  the 
way  to  a  spot  where  they  grew,  and  this  Septem- 
ber day  was  set  apart  for  the  excursion. 


108  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

After  leaving  the  street  cars  we  turned  down 
a  side  path  and  entered  a  deep  cut,  and  in  anoth- 
er minute  a  great  wall  of  uneven  rock  and  earth 
stood  in  front  of  us,  covered  from  top  to  bottom 
with  the  most  exquisite  green.  Mosses  clung 
close  like  a  rich  velvet  mantle,  ferns  reared  their 
delicate  fronds,  tiny  weeds  fresh  from  the  continual 
sprinkling  of  a  stream  of  water  which  trickled 
over  the  rock  grew  in  all  the  little  crannies,  and 
close  around  a  spring  which  had  hollowed  out  a 
small  basin  for  itself  in  a  ledge  of  the  solid  rock 
grew  the  liverwort. 

Besides  what  I  had  seen  before  in  the  liver- 
worts I  now  found  that  the  leaves  were  spotted  all 
over  with  diamond-shaped  markings  of  a  darker 
green,  each  of  which  had  a  dot  in  the  centre,  and 
that  they  were  covered  underneath  with  a  num- 
ber of  white  glassy  hairs,  which  laid  hold  of  the 
rock,  and  glued  the  leaves  down  so  tightly  that 
it  was  very  hard  to  loosen  them. 

There  were  three  other  kinds  of  outgrowths 


Liverworts.  109 

upon  the  leaves,  which  I  want  to  show  you  when 
we  have  done  examining  the  leaves  themselves. 
Fig.  39,  a,  is  a  leaf  which  I  brought  home  to  draw 


FIG.  39. — LEAF  OF  LIVERWORT. 

a,  pocket  disks  ;  6,  seed  disks ;  c,  nest 

(Marchantia.} 

for  you ;  b  is  another  from  a  place  close  by.  Fig. 
40  is  a  piece  of  the  same  leaf  magnified.  You 
see  the  diamond-shaped  spots  plainly  in  this,  with 
the  little  dot  in  the  centre.  Now  I  want  to  make 
you  understand  clearly  the  meaning  of  these  spots 
and  their  central  dot. 

Just  imagine  that  this  irregular  piece  of  leaf  is 
a  large  low  house,  only  one  story  high,  made  up 
of  quantities  of  little  rooms  placed  side  by  side, 
and  with  no  entries  or  passageways  between  them. 
The  under  side  of  the  leaf  is  the  floor  of  the  house 


510  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

the  top  is  the  roof,  and  the  diamond-shaped  spots 
all  over  the  top  are  the  roofs  of  the  separate 
rooms ;  each  spot  is  a  single  roof,  and  covers  in 
one  room.  The  dot  in  the  centre  is  a  wonderful 
little  chimney  that  leads  out  of  the  room  into  the 


7i 

FIG.  40. — PART  OF  LEAF  OF  LIVERWORT,  MAGNIFIED. 
h,  root  hairs. 
(MarcJiantia.) 

open  air,  and  keeps  it  fresh.  These  chimneys  are 
for  the  same  purpose  as  the  lips  we  have  been  ex- 
amining in  the  corn-plant ;  the  rooms  are  the  hol- 
lows of  the  mouths,  but  instead  of  two  simple  lips 
opening  into  a  hollow  the  liverwort  has  this  cu- 


liverworts. 

rious  chimney-like  opening  and  looks  so  little  like 
a  mouth  that  I  did  not  want  to  make  it  harder  to 
understand  by  calling  it  so.  These  rooms  have 
no  doors  or  windows ;  they  have  only  these  chim- 
neys, for  their  inhabitants  never  want  to  come 
and  go ;  they  only  want  light  and  air,  and  these 
they  get  through  the  chimneys.  We  have  been 
looking  at  the  liverwort  rooms  from  above;  a 
good  magnifying-glass  will  let  you  look  right  down 
the  chimney's  throat  into  the  rooms,  and  see  the  lit- 
tle inhabitants.  Now  « 
I  want  to  take  off  the 
front  of  one  of  them  as 
you  take  off  the  front 
of  a  baby-house  to  look  FlG  41._LEAF  OF  LIVERWORT 
in  Fig  41  is  a  room  CUT  THROUGH  ONE  ROOM  AND 

FLOOR. 
CUt  in  this  Way,  though     r,  roof;  c,  chimney ;  w,  wall ;  p, plants 

this  is  cut  right  down 

through  the  middle,  so 

that  the  chimney  is  sliced  in  two,  and  you  may 

see  how  it  is  built. 


growing  inside  ;  /,  floor. 
(Marchantia.) 


112  Chapters  on  Plcmt  Life. 

The  floor,/,  is  very  thick,  made  up  of  three  or 
four  rows  of  cells;  the  walls  (w)  are  only  one 
cell  deep ;  the  roof  (r)  slopes  up  from  every  side 
towards  the  chimney  (c*),  which  is  in  the  mid- 
dle. The  chimney,  as  you  see,  is  built  of  rows 
of  cells,  one  laid  on  top  of  another,  just  as  the 
bricks  are  laid  in  our  chimneys.  The  inhabitants 
are  like  the  inhabitants  of  a  greenhouse;  they 
are  queer  little  plants,  something  like  the  cactus 
plant  so  common  in  greenhouses  or  as  a  window 
plant. 

The  liverwort  is  a  plant  that  seems  to  be  all 
leaves.  There  is  no  regular  stem,  but  the  leaves 
grow  on  and  on,  one  out  of  another;  the  roots  (A) 
are  the  little  glassy  hairs  that  grow  from  the  un- 
der part  of  the  leaf.  What  takes  the  place  of  a 
flower — that  is,  the  part  that  produces  the  seed — 
also  grows  out  of  the  leaf.  I  hope  you  noticed 
in  Fig.  39,  &,  the  odd  little  umbrella-shaped  things 
that  came  out  of  one,  and  the  blunt,  clumsy  scal- 
loped clubs  out  of  the  other,  a.  If  not,  you  may 


Liverwwts.  113 

look  back  now  and  see  them,  for  they  are  very 
curious  little  things. 

The  first  we  will  examine  under  the  magnifier. 
Fig.  39,  &,  is  like  a  little  umbrella  deeply  scalloped 
about  the  edge.  In  Fig.  42  you  may  see  it  in  two 


a  c 

FIG.  42.— SEED  DISK. 

a,  6,  seed  disks,  two  positions ;  c,  vegetable  bottle. 
(Marchantia.) 

positions  very  much  enlarged.  No  drawing  can 
give  you  the  least  idea  how  beautiful  this  is  under 
the  microscope  (Fig.  42,  a) ;  the  delicate  green 
spotted  with  a  deeper  tint  of  the  same  color  and 
from  beneath  lovely  irregular  fringes,  which  look 
as  if  they  were  made  of  glistening  spun  glass. 

8 


114  Chapters  on  Pla/nt  Life. 

r 

When  you  turn  it  over  (£)  you  see  nestling  be- 
tween the  bright  fringes  a  little  round  body  like 
a  pea  in  its  pod ;  this  body  comes  after  the  seed, 
If  I  had  looked  for  iny  liverwort  earlier  I  would 
not  have  seen  this  pea,  but  would  have  found 
something  even  more  singular,  which  comes  before 
it,  as  the  flower  comes  before  the  fruit.  We  can- 
not talk  about  things  without  having  some  name 
to  call  them  by,  and  as  the  names  the  botanists 
give  these  things  are  very  long  and  hard  and 
puzzling,  we  will  name  them  for  ourselves,  and 
call  these  long  scalloped  umbrellas  seed  disks,  for 
they  grow  the  seed. 

After  the  seed  disks  have  grown,  down  between 
the  fringes  a  tiny  bud  sprouts,  which,  when  it  is 
complete,  is  an  odd,  pretty  little  vegetable  bottle 
with  a  ball  in  the  middle  (Fig.  42,  c),  reminding 
one  of  the  water-bottles  with  ice  frozen  in  them 
that  we  sometimes  see  at  restaurants.  When  the 
bottles  are  full  grown  the  neck  peeps  out  from 
between  the  fringes,  waiting  for  something. 


Liverworts. 


115 


Now  we  will  have  to  go  back,  as  they  do  in 
the  story-books,  and  see  what  the  bottles  are 
stretching  out  their  little  necks  for.  On  the  other 
growths  (Fig.  39,  a)  you  see  some  queer  little 
toadstools  which  grow  underneath  the  leaf,  and 
curve  around  upward  till  they  stand  straight 
up  ;  these  usually  grow  on  another  plant  near  by 
the  seed  disk,  and  while  one  is  growing  the  other 
is  doing  the  same  thing. 
Now  look  at  one  of 
these  little  toadstools 
(they  are  not  really 
toadstools,  but  they 
look  like  them).  This 
was  cut  with  a  sharp 
razor  right  down 
through  the  middle,  as  ^  43._WHIp.CA8E. 

We   did    the    tiny  room     <*»  pocket  disks  ;  &,  egg-shaped  body; 

c,  whips  ;  A,  root  hairs. 

of  the  leaf,  and  you  are 


looking  at  it  sidewise. 

You  see  (Fig.  43,  a)  that  it  is  all  full  of  little 


116  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

pockets,  and  that  standing  on  end  in  each  pocket 
is  something  like  an  egg.  Fig.  43,  &,  is  this  egg 
enlarged  still  more. 

Each  of  these  eggs  is  like  an  immense  prison, 
with  hundreds  of  cells  built  story  on  story.  In 
each  cell  is  an  impatient  little  prisoner  waiting  to 
get  out.  You  remember  I  told  you  the  liver- 
worts always  lived  where  there  was  plenty  of 
water.  The  water  is  the  fairy  that  finally  lets 
the  prisoners  free.  It  trickles  into  the  pockets 
and  fills  them,  and  the  prison  walls  swell  and 
crack  and  free  the  captives.  Funny-looking  little 
things  they  are,  too,  when  they  get  out !  Put 
them  in  a  little  water  on  a  piece  of  glass  and  look 
at  them  through  your  microscope,  and  you  will 
see  hundreds  of  little  blunt-handled  whips,  each 
with  a  couple  of  lashes  (Fig.  43,  <?),  which  have 
the  singular  power  of  whipping  around  without 
any  help. 

By  some  unknown  means  beyond  our  guessing 
these  diligent  little  whips,  sooner  or  later  in  their 


Liverworts.  117 

active  trips  through  the  water,  find  the  open 
mouths  of  the  bottles  in  the  seed  disk,  and  whip 
themselves  in.  This  was  what  the  bottle  was 
waiting  for;  and  the  ball  in  the  bottle,  and  the 
whip  which  has  found  its  way  into  it,  enter  on  a 
very  close  partnership.  Just  such  a  partnership 
as  this  must  be  made  for  the  formation  of  every 
seed. 

In  ordinary  plants  the  seed  formed  in  this  way 
falls  into  the  ground  and  makes  a  new  plant,  but 
the  liverworts  do  not.  Without  leaving  its  home 
between  the  glassy  fringes  the  seed  grows  till  it 
makes  the  round  pea  which  we  saw  in  Fig.  42,  b; 
this  is  made  up  of  a  quantity  of  a  kind  of  seed 
called  spores,  and  whole  bundles  of  long  elastic 
threads,  which,  when  they  are  ripe,  snap  and  flirt 
the  seed  everywhere  about,  so  that  one  single 
seed  produces  thousands  of  spores,  which  sow 
themselves  broadcast. 

Besides  these  curious  arrangements  for  sowing 
themselves,  there  is  yet  another.  The  liverworts, 


118  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

when  they  find  themselves  in  very  comfortable 
quarters,  get  lazy;  they  grow  and  spread  and 
take  their  ease,  and  don't  seem  to  care  whether 
any  other  liverworts  come  after  them  when  they 
die  or  not ;  no  little  disks  grow  on  them  to  make 
seed  and  sow  themselves ;  but  whether  these  disks 


•;_£.'& 

FIG.  44. — CUPULE,  on  NEST 
(Marchantia.) 

grow  or  not,  they  almost  always  have  on  their 
leaves  the  little  nests  marked  c  on  Fig.  39. 

Now  let  us  put  one  of  these  under  the  micro- 
scope and  look  at  it.  If  it  was  hard  to  give  any 
idea  of  the  seed  disk  by  means  of  a  mere  picture, 
it  is  impossible  here.  The  nests  are  the  most 


Liverworts.  119 

exquisite  things  imaginable:  the  shape  you  see 
in  Fig.  44,  but  they  look  as  if  they  were  carved 
out  of  a  pale  emerald,  the  fringed  points  shining 
and  glistening,  and  down  in  the  bottom  of  the 
nest  lies  a  treasure -trove  of  carved  gems  of  a 
deeper  green.  Over  it  all  one  would  imagine 
diamond  dust  had  been  sprinkled,  as  it  glitters 
and  sparkles  in  the  light.  These  little  gems  are 
spores  which  are  washed  out  of  the  nest,  and 
taking  root,  make  new  plants  to  bear  new  nests 
as  beautiful  as  themselves. 

Upon  pots  in  most  greenhouses  you  will  find 
quantities  of  another  kind  of  liverwort,  not  nearly 
so  beautiful  as  the  one  I  have  been  describing. 
Instead  of  the  nests  there  are  little  crescent- 
shaped  pockets  which  hold  the  spores.  Another 
kind  has  a  little  upright  flask  which  holds  them. 
But  whatever  shape  they  may  be,  and  whether 
the  seed-making  disks  are  on  the  leaves  or  not, 
some  kind  of  cup  or  pocket  for  the  spores  is 
always  formed. 


120  Chapters  on  Plcmt  Life. 


CHAPTER  X. 

MOSSES. 

You  must  have  noticed,  whether  you  live  in 
the  city  or  the  country,  how  quickly  a  velvety 
coat  of  moss  forms  wherever  it  can  get  a  chance. 
It  needs  plenty  of  shade  and  moisture,  and  where 
it  finds  these  things  it  grows  quickly:  roofs  and 
pavements,  water- butts  and  troughs,  tree-trunks 
and  rocks,  soon  cover  themselves  with  a  rich 
plush  garment  of  green  or  brown  when  left  un- 
disturbed, if  they  are  in  damp  and  shady  places. 

Moss  was  the  world's  first  compass.  Before 
people  had  ventured  out  into  the  great  waters 
the  compass  was  only  needed  to  guide  men 
through  the  forests  on  dark  and  cloudy  days. 
By  looking  at  the  trees  the  wild  hunter  could 
tell  where  the  north  was,  because  the  mosses 


Mosses.  121 

grow  on  that  side,  nestling  in  the  shade,  where 
the  dew  and  the  rain  lie  longest. 

Perhaps  you  have  never  really  examined  moss. 
Looking  at  it  carelessly,  you  have  naturally 
thought  that  there  were  only  a  few  kinds,  and 
these  kinds  very  much  alike.  Now  if  you  are 
anywhere  that  you  can  study  them,  take  your 
pocket -microscope,  and  you  will  find  that  you 
are  very  much  mistaken.  There  are  in  reality 
a  great  many  kinds  of  mosses,  differing  from  each 
other  almost  as  much  as  the  flowers  in  your  gar- 
den do.  The  moss-plant  is  so  tiny  that  you  must 
look  through  your  microscope  to  see  how  really 
beautiful  it  is;  but  a  careful  examination  with- 
out the  help  of  the  glass  will  probably  show  you 
much  that  you  have  never  noticed  before. 

Before  we  go  any  further,  let  me  tell  you,  if 
you  have  not  one  of  the  child's  microscopes  with 
all  the  little  tools  to  dissect  flowers  and  see  in- 
sects with,  how  to  make  yourself  some  dissecting 
needles.  Make  with  a  penknife  several  little 


122  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

bits  of  wood,  something  like  a  piece  of  a  wooden 
pen-handle ;  into  one  end  of  each  push  the  head 
of  a  No.  8  sewing  needle.  You  can  easily  do  this, 
if  the  little  handles  are  made  of  pine  or  cedar, 
either  by  holding  the  needle  with  a  pair  of  com- 
mon pliers,  or  by  pushing  carefully  against  some 
wood,  so  as  not  to  break  the  point. 

When  you  are  ready  to  dissect  your  leaf  or 
flower,  lay  it  on  a  small  piece  of  glass.  If  the 
flower  is  light,  put  a  piece  of  black  stuff  under 
the  glass;  if  it  is  dark,  put  some  white  paper 
under  it,  to  help  you  see  it  easily.  Then  take 
one  of  your  needles  in  one  hand  and  one  in  the 
other,  and  pull  the  object,  little  by  little,  to 
pieces.  This  is  called  "  teasing  out "  the  leaf. 
In  this  way  you  will  find  out  a  great  many 
things  about  it  which  you  would  never  find  by 
merely  pulling  it  to  pieces  with  your  fingers. 
If  you  have  a  microscope  or  magnifying  -  glass, 
put  each  piece  under  it  and  examine  it  closely. 
It  is  very  interesting  work,  and  when  you  find 


123 


one  curious  thing  after  another,  you  will  never 
think  of  calling  it  tiresome.  I  have  spent  two 
steady  hours  teasing  out  a  tiny  water-plant  to 
find  one  particular  kind  of  bud,  but  I  found  it  at 
last,  and  then  all  the  work  seemed  easy  enough. 

While  I  was  writing  this  I 
thought  I  would  see  if  I  could 
not  find  some  moss  in  the 
garden,  and  in  about  five 
minutes  I  have  gathered  five 
different  kinds  of  moss.  One 
little  patch  that  is  lying  be- 
fore me  I  will  tell  you  about, 
so  that  you  may  look  for 
some  like  it;  it  is  a  very 
common  kind.  On  a  square 
inch  of  earth  I  found  hun- 
dreds of  little  green  clumps 
(Fig.  45).  From  among 
these  spring  up  some  slender 

L  B 

red  stems,  from  half  an  inch 


FlG-  45- 

Moss  SPORE-CASES. 


124 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


to  an  inch  in  height.  Each  of  these  stems  bears 
a  curved  pod,  some  with  caps  and  some  without. 
In  Fig.  45  the  right-hand  one,  B,  has  its  cap 

on,  while  A  has  lost 
its  cover.  The  caps 
fit  on  so  easily  that  I 
can  lift  them  off  with  a 
touch.  These  pods  are 
the  little  vases  that 
hold  the  moss  spores, 
from  which  new  moss- 
plants  will  grow. 
When  they  are  ripe, 
and  ready  to  be  sowed, 
the  vase  will  attend  to 
the  business,  and  scat- 
ter them  far  and  wide. 
The  caps  come  off,  and 
the  tiny  seed  in  the 

FIG.  46.— YOUNG  Moss  PLANT.      vase  are  blown  out  by 

A,  spore  ;  r,  root;  Z,  leaf;  .      , 

B,  young  plant.  the    wind   or   washed 


Mosses.  125 

out  by  the  rain.     Other  mosses  have  different 
shaped  vases,  some  of  them  very  beautiful. 

A  new  moss- plant  begins  from  one  of  the 
spores  which  lies  on  the  ground.  The  dampness 
makes  the  spore  begin  to  swell.  One  little  bud 
pushes  itself  out  at  one  end,  and  another  at  the 
other  (Fig.  46,  A).  A  is  the  spore,  I  the  leaf- 
bud,  r  the  root-bud.  At  first  these  buds  seem 
just  alike,  but  very  soon  we  begin  to  see  a  differ- 
ence :  one  bud  lies  on  the  ground,  and  gets  brown 
and  ugly,  r;  the  other,  ?,  grows  up  into  the  air 
and  becomes  green,  and  sends  out  little  fairy-like 
stems  and  leaves.  But  both  grow  and  spread, 
the  leaf-bud  to  make  the  velvet  sheet  of  moss, 
the  root-bud  to  make  a  tangle  which  pushes  its 
way  into  the  ground  below.  Both  the  root-bud 
and  leaf-bud  are  necessary  to  the  life  of  the  plant 
and  to  each  other.  The  root  drinks  in  the  water 
and  food  from  the  earth ;  the  leaf  breathes  in  the 
air  and  sunshine.  The  happy  little  bud  in  the 
air  is  not  too  proud  and  selfish  to  help  its  ugly 


126 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


E 


little  brother  who  is  digging 
down  into  the  earth.  They  work 
lovingly  together,  helping  each 
other  and  all  the  family  of  which 
they  are  members.  In  Fig.  46, 
B,  you  see  the  beginning  of  a 
plant;  the  buds  grow  and  branch, 
and  set  up  cross  partitions,  so  that 
what  was  at  first  one  long  nar- 
row room  or  cell  is  now  many 
such  rooms  placed  end  to  end. 

After  the  plant  has  grown, 
sometimes  till  it  has  covered  sev- 
eral square  inches  of  ground,  it 
begins  to  get  ready  to  grow  the 
parts  that  correspond  to  a  flower. 
Little  buds  curled  up  close  in  a 
bunch  of  leaves  begin  to  grow 
FIG.  47.—  WHIP-CASE,  on  the  ends  of  the  branches.  In 

of     each     of 


d,  whips  escaping;  J?, 
whips    coiled  ;    C, 

whips  free.  bunches  grows  a  curious  little 

(Funaria.) 


127 


sack  or  bottle.  In  Fig.  47,  A,  is  one 
taken  out  of  the  middle  of  a  little 
bunch  of  leaves.  This  is  a  sort  of 
whip-case  with  quantities  of  little 
double-lashed  whips,  d,  escaping.  B 
is  one  of  the  whips  coiled  in  its 
little  pocket,  and  C  is  another,  free. 
While  this  whip-  case  has  been 
growing,  on  the  same  plant,  or  an- 
other near  by,  another  bud  is  form- 
ing in  a  bunch  of  leaves  (Fig.  48). 
This  bud  looks  like  a  bottle  with 
a  small  body  and  a  long  curved 
neck.  In  the  midst  of  the  body  is 
a  round  object:  this  is  the  ovule, 
the  whips  are  the  pollen,  and  when 
a  partnership  is  formed  between  the 
two,  we  have  the  beginning  of  a 
true  seed.  This  is  all  so  much  FIG.  48.—  OVULE- 
like  the  liverworts  that  I  have  not 
gone  into  it  very  particularly.  If 


CASE- 

o,  ovule. 


138 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


you  have  forgotten  look  back  at  the  last  chapter. 

The  whips,  when  they  get  out  of  the  pockets,  go 

lashing  around  in  the  water  near  the  moss  till 

they  find  the  mouth  of 
the  bottle.  They  go  in 
there,  and  work  their 
way  down  to  the 
ovule.  Here  the  two 
seem  to  melt  into  one, 
and  the  seed  is  begun, 
If  there  is  no  water, 
and  the  partnership 
is  not  formed,  the 
moss -plant  drops  its 
spores,  and  new  plants 
are  formed  from  them ; 
but  it  seems  better  to 
have  some  seed  plants 
every  now  and  then : 

the  moss-bed  seems  strengthened  by  them. 

The  moss-plant,  begun  in  either  way,  grows  and 


FIG.  49. — SPHAGNUM  ENLABGED. 


Mosses. 

spreads,  creeping  over  earth  or  bark  or  rock,  till 
it  makes  a  beautiful  velvet  bed ;  it  sends  up  its 
pods  and  scatters  its  spores ;  new  plants  spring  up, 
and  so  it  goes  on,  and  has 
gone  on  for  thousands 
and  thousands  of  years. 

There  is  a  very  com- 
mon kind  of  moss  that 
grows  in  poor,  miserable 
ground,  which  has  some 
wonderful  things  about 
it.  Fig.  49  gives  a  pict- 
ure of  the  plant,  magni- 
fied ;  in  Fig.  50  you  may 
see  the  beautiful  whip- 
case  of  this  moss. 

I  have  tried  to  make 
the  curious  way  in  which 
leaves  are  built  up  of 

,  FIG.  50.— WHIP-CASE. 

cells  clear  to  you  by 

•  J          d,  whips  and  whip  magnified. 

comparing     them      to  (Sphagnum.) 


130 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


houses  with  rooms  built  story  above  story  and 
side  by  side.  This  moss  I  am  telling  you  about 
is  like  a  very  large,  rambling,  one -storied  house. 
It  is  not  a  private  house,  though,  for  there  are 

ever  so  many  rooms 
with  round  doors  that 
open  out,  and  in  these 
rooms  certain  funny 
little  water -insects 
take  refuge  just  as  cool- 
ly as  if  they  had  paid 
their  rent  and  carried 
the  door- key  in  their 
side  pockets.  Fig.  51 
gives  a  piece  of  one  of 
these  leaves  very  much 

FIG.  51.-SPHAGNUM-LEAF         enlarged :  r,  r,  r,  are  the 
MAGNIFIED.  rooms  to  let,  and  I,  I,  I, 

rt  r,  rt  rooms  ;  Z,  Z,  I,  doors.  .     ' 

the  doors  into  them. 

Mosses  do  not  seem  to  be  of  much  value;  we 
are  apt  to  think  of  them  as  poor,  useless  little 


Mosses.  131 

things  of  very  little  account,  especially  the  dry 
sphagnum  moss.  But  this  is  not  really  the  case. 
Just  as  the  wood  of  the  trees  that  died  thousands 
of  years  ago  has  made  our  coal,  so  the  sphagnum 
moss  of  those  old  times  has  made  the  peat  bogs 
of  Ireland.  You  must  have  heard  or  read  how 
the  poor  Irish  people,  who  cannot  afford  to  burn 
coal  or  wood,  make  their  rooms  warm  and  cook 
their  meals  by  peat  which  they  dig  from  the 
bogs.  This  peat  is  the  sphagnum  moss,  packed 
layer  upon  layer,  as  year  after  year  a  new  crop 
grew  on  top  of  the  old  one. 


132  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


CHAPTER  XL 

FERNS. 

OUT  in  the  pleasaut  woods,  where  the  shade  is 
so  thick  that  the  sun  cannot  manage  to  get  through 
the  leaves  to  dry  up  the  moisture,  the  ferns  love 
to  grow ;  they  delight  in  mossy  dells,  and  dripping 
rocks,  and  gently  rippling  streams,  and  about  such 
places  you  will  be  most  likely  to  find  them  large 
and  fine. 

Did  you  ever  notice  the  little  fern  leaf  as  it 
lifts  its  head  above  the  grass  ?  It  comes  up,  all 
curled  up,  hugging  itself  close  to  keep  warm, 
it  would  seem.  Pretty  soon  the  coil  begins  to 
loosen,  and  the  stem  to  straighten  itself  out,  and 
the  little  leaves  to  unfold  and  stretch  themselves 
in  the  sweet  air  and  sunshine  (Fig.  52). 

Every  child  and  very  nearly  every  grown  per- 


Fem,s. 


133 


son  who  roams  the  woods  for  wild  flowers  learns 
to  love  ferns :  their  fresh,  bright,  green,  and  deli- 
cate leaves  make 
up  for  the  want 
of  blossoms.  Some 
of  them  droop  and 
fade  very  quickly 
in  water,  but  oth- 
ers stay  fresh  for 
a  long  time,  and 
make  a  beautiful 
bouquet  of  them- 
selves, or  with 
bright  autumn 
leaves.  Nothing 
else  that  grows 
is  so  beautiful 
and  natural  when 
pressed  as  fern 

leaves;  perhaps  that  is  why  every  one  is  tempted 
to  gather  them. 


FIG.  52.— YOUNG  FEKN. 


134 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


Ferns,  like  the  liverworts  and  mosses,  do  not 
bear  flowers.  Let  us  take  any  common  fern  and 
examine  it.  On  the  back  of  the  leaf,  if  it  is  late 
enough  in  the  season,  you  will 
find  some  patches  which  look 
like  rust.  On  some  leaves 
these  splotches  are  spotted  reg- 
ularly over  the  leaf,  or  along 
lines  (Fig.  53);  on  others  they 
form  a  lace -like  pattern;  on 
others  again  they  are  dotted 
around  the  edge,  as  in  the 
maiden-hair  fern.  When  you 
look  closely  at  this  rust  it  ap- 
pears like  a  sort  of  powder,  but 
the  minute  you  put  it  under  a 
magnifying-glass  you  see  how 
curious  it  is.  Every  grain  of 
the  dust  is  a  little  roundish  case 
full  of  brown  specks.  The  cases  are  sacs  to  hold 
the  spores  (Fig.  54,  A,  B).  These  spores,  you  re- 


FIG.  53.— LEAF  WITH 
SPORE- CASES  ON  BACK. 


Ferns. 


135 


member,  are  a  kind  of  seed,  each  one  capable  of 
producing  a  new  plant.  Nearly  surrounding  the 
sac  is  what  looks  like  a 
necklace  of  clear  beads : , 
these  beads  are  really  a 
row  of  thick  small  cells 
that  draw  together  as 
the  whole  case  dries, 
and  finally  split  open 
the  case  and  let  the 
spores  free  (Fig.  54,  £). 
Different  ferns  have 

,  .     ,        f  FIG.  54. 

various  kinds  of  spore   ^  8pore.case .  ^  case  8plit  open> 

Cases;      almost      all      Of        letting  spores  escape;  6,  &,  spores. 

them  grow  in  some  sort  of  a  pocket.  Some  fern 
leaves  have  shallow  pockets  on  each  side  of  the 
middle  vein,  or  stem,  that  runs  through  the  leaf; 
others  have  their  edges  doubled  over  to  form  the 
pockets.  The  maiden-hair  fern  has,  as  you  know, 
beautiful  polished  black  stems  and  shield-shaped 
leaves.  In  each  scallop  at  the  top  of  the  leaf  is 


136  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

a  pocket  full  of  spore-cases,  which  looks,  to  your 
naked  eye,  like  an  ornamental  dot  to  improve  the 
appearance  of  the  leaf. 

If  you  happen  to  have  some  of  the  creeping 
Hartford  fern,  which  is  used  so  much  for  decora- 
tion, examine  it,  and  you  will  see  that  it  has  all 
along  the  stem  large  leaves  with  no  spots  on 
the  back,  but  at  the  end  of  each  branch  is  a 
number  of  small  and  slender  leaves;  turn  these 
over,  and  you  will  find  the  whole  leaf  covered 
with  the  rusty  powder.  Such  ferns  as  these  are 
sometimes  called  incorrectly  flowering  ferns.  Cor- 
rectly speaking,  they  have  two  kinds  of  leaves — 
one  which  bears  and  one  which  does  not  bear 
spores.  The  flowering  plants  belong  to  a  higher 
class  of  vegetable  life. 

The  fern  family  are  not  very  aristocratic  mem- 
bers of  society  in  the  vegetable  world ;  they  are 
classed  with  mosses  and  liverworts  and  other 
flowerless  plants.  But  in  their  own  class  they 
stand  highest;  they  are  the  first,  as  we  go  from 


Ferns.  137 

the  lower  to  the  higher,  that  have  real  roots,  roots 
with  a  root-cap,  and  the  curious  air-vessels  run- 
ning through  them,  which  you  see  in  Fig.  55. 
Some  of  these  air-vessels  are  wonderfully  beauti- 
ful. Did  you  never  notice,  when  you  broke  a 
tough,  green,  juicy  stem  of  a  plant,  how  some 
threads  seemed  to  break  hardest,  and  hung  out 
of  the  broken  end  of  the  stem  as  if  they  had  been 
stretched  longer  than  the  rest  of  it.  These  strings 
are  the  air-vessels :  I  would  like  to  show  you  how 
beautiful  they  are  when  we  look  at  them  through 
a  microscope.  These  fibres  help  to  strengthen 
the  plant,  as  your  muscles  do  your  body,  and 
they  are  at  the  same  time  air-passages ;  they  are 
both  muscles  and  lungs  in  one.  Every  leaf  and 
stem  and  root  in  all  the  plants  that  have  flowers 
or  fruit,  in  all  the  forest  -  trees — in  fact,  in  every 
plant  higher  (not  in  size,  but  in  kind)  than  the 
mosses — are  full  of  these  wonderful  and  beautiful 
air-vessels. 

Since  I  cannot  show  you  the  vessels  themselves, 


138 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


I  will  do  the  best  I  can,  and  show  the  likeness  of 
a  bundle  of  them  taken  out  of  a  fern  leaf  some 
time  ago  and  put  under  the  microscope  (Fig.  55). 
Is  not  it  wonderful  that  so  much  beauty  should 


FIG.  55. — AIR-VESSELS  OF  FERN. 

be  hidden  away  in  every  leaf  and  stem  and  blade 
of  grass  where  no  one  ever  suspected  it,  until  of 
late  years  men  have  found  it? 

Now  let  us  take  one  of  the  tiny  fern  spores  and 
drop  it  on  the  damp  earth  and  see  what  happens. 


Ferns. 


The  spore  swells  with  soaking  up  the  water,  one 
side  cracks  open, 
and  after  a  while 
a  little  bit  of 
a  white  head, 
something  like 
the  end  of  a  white 
worm,  pushes  it- 
self out.  As  this 
grows  it  sets  up 
partition  walls, 
making  new  cells 
on  every  side,  till 
finally  we  have 

a  little  thin,  flat,  B 

pale  green  leaf  ly- 
ing close  against 
the  ground  (Fig. 
56).  It  holds  to 


FIG.  56. — LEAF  OF  FERN. 

the  gl'OUnd,  and  A,  Flat  first-leaf;  a  a,  ovule-cases;  66,  whip- 
cases;  <r,  whips  coiled  up;  B,  whip -cases 
and  ovule-cases  enlarged. 


sucks  its   moist- 


140  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

lire  by  thread-like  root  hairs  growing  from  the 
lower  side.  On  the  upper  side,  after  a  while,  little 
knobs  begin  to  show,  dotting  the  leaf  irregularly. 
Under  the  magnify  ing-glass  these  dots  are  seen 
to  be  of  two  kinds.  One  kind  has  within  it  a 
round  body  (Fig.  56,  A,  a),  the  ovule;  the  other 
a  number  of  little  whip-cases,  such  as  the  mosses 
and  liverworts  have  (Fig.  56,  A,  Z>).  This  leaf 
with  these  tiny  knobs  is  what  the  fern  has  in 
place  of  flowers.  The  ovule  is  like  those  inside 
the  moss  and  liverwort  bottles;  the  whip-cases 
are  also  like  the  whip-cases  in  the  mosses  and 
liverworts. 

When  the  ovule  is  ripe,  and  the  whips  com- 
pletely grown,  the  knob  opens ;  the  opening  above 
the  ovule  (Fig.  56,  B,  a)  is  filled  with  mucilage, 
\  which  catches  any  of  the  unwary  little  whips 
lashing  about  in  (Fig.  56,  B,  G)  the  water  where 
the  leaf  is  growing.  A  partnership  is  formed  be- 
tween the  whip  and  an  ovule,  and  together  they 
grow  into  a  true  seed.  This  seed  then  acts  like 


Ferns.  141 

any  other  seed,  sprouts,  sends  out  leaves  and  roots, 
and  we  have  a  fern  plant.  In  ordinary  plants  the 
roots  and  stems  and  leaves  grow  first,  and  then 
comes  the  flower  which  bears  the  seed.  In  the 
mosses  and  ferns  the  part  that  stands  in  the  place 
of  a  flower  grows  all  by  itself  and  produces  its 
seed ;  this  then  grows  into  a  plant,  bears  spores, 
which  are  rather  like  tiny  slips  or  buds  from  the 
plant  than  like  seed.  These  in  their  turn  produce 
the  little  "  first  leaf,"  and  so  it  goes  on,  two  dis- 
tinct and  separate  growths  being  necessary  to 
fill  out  the  whole  life  of  every  single  plant  of 
the  fern  family. 


142  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

FLOWERS  IN  FANCY  DRESS. 

I  REMEMBER  as  well  as  though  it  were  yester- 
day how,  years  and  years  ago,  when  I  was  a  very 
little  girl,  I  very  often  roamed  through  the  beau- 
tiful woods  of  Southern  Ohio,  hunting  for  a  cer- 
tain wild-flower. 

The  object  of  my  search  was  a  flower  not  often 
found,  which  we  children  called  the  Indian  moc- 
casin. It  did  look  like  a  moccasin,  indeed,  with 
its  round  blunt  toe  and  yellow,  leathery,  shoe- 
shaped  poucho  I  wonder  if  any  prospector  ever 
looked  for  signs  of  gold  with  more  intense  excite- 
ment than  I  felt  when  searching  for  my  little  gold- 
en shoe  ?  Everywhere  I  turned,  in  my  breathless 
haste,  yellow  moccasins  seemed  dancing  before 
my  eyes,  and  I  hardly  knew,  till  my  eager  hands 


Flowers  in  Fancy  Dress. 


143 


had  grasped  the   stem,  whether   it  was   a  real 
flower  I  had  found   or  not.     I  hardly  think  I 
could    have    valued    it 
more  if  I  had   known 
what  I  have  since  learn- 
ed about  the  wonderful 
ways  of  the  orchids,  to 
which  family  my  moc- 
casin belonged. 

You  may  never  have 
found  this  particular 
plant  in  your  rambles, 
and  yet  may  know  some 
other  of  the  orchid  tribe 
which  grows  wild  in 
our  woods.  The  com- 
mon names  are  so  differ- 
ent in  different  places  'that  it  is  hard  to  tell  you 
how  to  know  them  when  you  see  them.  The 
putty-root,  and  the  lady's-slipper  something  like 
that  in  Fig.  57,  are  some  of  them.  The  flower 


FIG.  57. — LADY'S-SLIPPER. 
(Cypripedium.) 


144 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


given  in  Fig.  57  is  a  cultivated  plant,  not  exactly 
like  any  wild  one,  but  a  good  deal  like  them< 


Not  the  touch-me- 
not,  a  plant  whose 
seed-pods  snap  and 
curl  up  if  you  touch 
them,  and  which  is 
sometimes  called 
lady's-slipper. 

The  orchids  are 
an  eccentric  family. 
There  is  scarcely 
one  of  them  which 
is  not  "  queer  "  in  some  way  or  other.  They  seem 


FlG.  58. — BUTTEKFLY  ORCHID. 

(Oncidium.) 


Flowers  in  Fwncy  Dress. 


145 


always  to  be  trying  to  look 
or  to  act  like  something 
besides  flowers.  They  imi- 
tate all  sorts  of  things 
besides  little  Indian  shoes. 
I  wish  I  could  take  you 
into  an  orchid  greenhouse 
and  let  you  look  around. 
You  would  think  you  had 
been  invited  to  a  fancy- 
dress  party  of  the  flowers. 
There  is  one  that  looks 
for  all  the  world  like  a 
swan,  with  its  long  curved 
neck;  there  is  a  beautiful 
butterfly  with  spotted  gold- 
en wings  (Fig.  58).  Fig. 
59  looks  like  a  stalk  up 
which  some  queer  little 
ant -like  creatures  seem 

climbing.     Bees   and   spi- 

10 


FIG.  59. — CLIMBING  ORCHID. 

(Catena.) 


146  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

ders,  done  in  brown  and  yellow,  or  perhaps  more 
gorgeous  colors,  are  all  around.  Here  is  a  long 
spike  of  waxen  flowers,  and  in  the  cup  of  each 
nestles  a  pure  white  dove  with  outspreading 
wings.  The  Spaniards  have  given  it  a  name 
which  means  the  flower  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  from 
its  resemblance  to  a  dove. 

These  strange  likenesses  to  other  things  are, 
however,  the  least  wonderful  thing  about  orchids. 
They  differ  from  ordinary  plants  in  many  singu- 
lar ways.  Many  of  them,  instead  of  growing  in 
the  ground,  and  drawing  from  it  their  food  and 
drink,  grow  in  the  air,  and  take  nourishment  from 
it  by  means  of  their  naked  dangling  roots.  It 
seems  sometimes  as  if  living  as  they  do,  high  up 
on  the  bark  of  trees,  had  put  the  notion  into  their 
heads  of  trying  to  look  like  birds  and  butterflies 
and  bees. 

The  air  manages  to  supply  them  with  food,  but 
they  have  to  depend  upon  getting  drink  in  some 
other  way.  Plants  are  a  good  deal  like  people 


Flowers  in  Fancy  Dress. 


147 


in  that  respect;  they  can  manage  to  get  along 
somehow  with  very  little  food,  but  they  soon  die 
of  thirst  if  deprived  of  water. 

In  a  wild  state  the  air-plants  grow  on  the  bark 
of  trees  or  on  other  substances,  but  they  send 
their  little  roots  into 
the  moist  bark  or  moss 
to  get  water.  They  do 
not  feed  on  the  juices 
of  the  trees,  as  parasites 
like  the  fungi  and  lich- 
ens and  mistletoe  do; 
they  only  want  a  stand- 
ing-place, something  to 
push  against  as  they 
grow,  and  plenty  of 
water.  In  the  green- 
house they  are  usually 
planted  in  pots  filled 
with  bits  of  stone  and  damp  moss,  or  they  grow 
attached  to  the  parent  plant,  as  you  may  see  in 


FIG.  60.  — YOUNG   PLANT  GROW- 
ING ON  FLOWER  STEM. 
(Dendrobium.) 


148  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

Fig.  60,  and  send  their  roots  out  into  the  air  for 
food.  A  few  of  them — the  Indian  moccasin,  for 
instance — grow  like  common  plants  in  the  ground. 

It  would  almost  seem  as  if  the  orchids  had  an 
eye  to  business  in  their  imitation  of  insects.  At 
any  rate,  there  seems  to  be  a  very  good  under- 
standing between  them,  and  constant  business  re- 
lations are  kept  up.  The  flowers  always  have  a 
little  pouch  somewhere  about  them  in  which  they 
keep  a  stock  of  honey  on  hand.  Their  beautiful 
colors  and  delicious  smell  attract,  by  day  and 
night,  bees,  butterflies,  and  moths.  In  return  for 
the  "treat"  which  the  flowers  give,  the  insects 
render  a  valuable  service  to  the  plants. 

I  must  remind  you  of  something  we  have  looked 
into  before,  and  that  is  that  every  perfect  seed  is 
the  result  of  a  partnership  entered  into  by  the 
pollen  grains  or  "  whips"  and  the  ovules  of  a  plant. 
The  pollen  is  the  yellow  dust  which  it  is  so  easy 
to  see  on  lilies  and  some  other  flowers;  it  is  to 
flowering  plants  what  the  whips  are  in  mosses 


Flowers  in  Fancy  Dress.  149 

and  ferns.  The  ovules  are  little  round  bodies 
lying  in  the  swollen  part  of  a  flower  where  it 
joins  the  stem.  Above  the  ovules,  and  connected 
with  them,  is  the  pistil,  sometimes  standing  up  in 
the  midst  of  the  stamens  which  make  the  centre 
of  most  flowers,  sometimes  it  is  only  a  sticky  lit- 
tle pad,  as  it  is  in  the  orchids.  Some  plants  get 
along  perfectly  well  if  this  partnership  is  entirely 
a  family  affair,  and  the  pollen  of  a  flower  falls  on 
its  own  pistil,  and  makes  a  union  with  its  own 
ovules ;  but  this  is  not  always  the  case.  Certain 
plants  require  that  the  pollen  shall  be  from  anoth- 
er plant  if  the  seed  is  to  be  sound  and  healthy. 
Orchids  require  this  cross -fertilization,  as  it  is 
called,  and  without  the  help  of  insects  it  could 
not  be  effected. 

Bees  and  other  flying  visitors,  it  is  found,  al- 
ways go  in  a  single  excursion  from  one  flower 
of  a  kind  to  another  of  the  same  kind.  They  do 
not  mix  their  drinks.  This  instinct  not  only 
serves  to  keep  the  honey  stored  by  the  bees  pure, 


150  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

but  it  enables  the  insects  to  carry  the  pollen  just 
where  it  will  be  useful.  The  pollen  of  a  morning, 
glory  would  die  if  put  on  the  rose  pistil.  It  must 
be  placed  on  a  flower  of  the  same  family  as  the 
one  it  came  from,  or  one  very  nearly  related  to  it, 
or  it  will  do  no  good. 

Now  look  at  Fig.  60  and  you  will  see  that  the 
flowers  have  a  hollow  tube  in  the  centre,  with  a 
projecting  lower  lip.  This  tube  is  a  single  leaf  or 
petal  curled  over  to  make  a  tunnel,  and  through 
this  tunnel  is  the  only  path  to  the  honey  pouch. 
When  a  butterfly  feels  like  taking  a  drink,  and 
one  of  these  orchids  is  near,  he  lights  on  the  lower 
lip  (Z)  of  the  tube,  and  pushing  his  long  proboscis, 
or  trunk,  through  it  into  the  pouch,  sucks  up  the 
honey.  Now  look  at  Fig.  61,  A.  This  is  a  picture 
of  the  tube  with  its  near  wall  cut  away,  so  that 
you  can  see  the  inside  arrangement.  As  he  works 
his  proboscis  down  into  the  honey  pouch,  N,  it  is 
pressed  against  r,  and  touches  a  spring  there ;  the 
little  cap  at  r  snaps  open,  and  leaves  a  sticky  ball 


„_ a 


FIG.  61.— HONEY  POUCH  AND  POLLEN  PODS, 
A,  Orchis  mascula;  B,  Dendrobium  cut  in  two. 


Flowers  in  Fancy  Dress.  153 

resting  on  the  proboscis.  As  the  butterfly  goes 
on  sucking,  this  ball  dries  as  if  it  were  glued  to 
his  trunk.  When  he  draws  his  head  out,  this  pro- 
boscis is  ornamented  with  one  or  two  little  tufts 
which  look  like  the  trees  in  a  child's  toy  village, 
as  you  will  see  in  the  illustration  (Fig.  61,  0). 

Now  look  at  the  fragment  of  a  flower  in  the 
part  marked  A  of  the  same  illustration.  Suppose 
the  pollen  tuft  to  stay  just  where  it  is  when  the 
butterfly  comes  out  of  the  flower.  You  can  see  by 
looking  at  the  figure  that  it  would  strike  r  in  the 
next  flower  it  entered,  and  that  would  do  no 
good:  s  is  the  place  it  should  strike;  s  is  the 
pistil.  Now  take  an  orchid  flower,  if  you  can  get 
one ;  if  not,  look  at  Fig.  62,  A,  and  see  what  will 
happen.  I  push  into  it  a  sharpened  lead-pencil, 
and  it  comes  out  with  the  pollen  tuft  standing  up 
as  it  does  on  the  butterfly's  trunk.  Watch  it  a 
minute.  As  it  dries,  the  stem  of  the  tuft  bends 
down  towards  the  point  of  the  pencil.  Now  push 
it  into  another  flower.  Wait  a  little  while — a 


154 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


minute  perhaps — and  take  the  pencil  out.  You 
will  see  that  the  pollen  has  been  pulled  out  of  its 
little  case.  If  you  tear  open  the  flower,  you  will 
find  the  pollen  sticking  so  tight  on  the  pistil,  s, 
that  you  can  scarcely  brush  it  off.  In  this  upper 
flower  the  drawing  is  from  Mr.  Darwin's  book, 
but  the  lower  one  is  one  of  the  flowers  in  Fig.  60 


FIG.  62. — PENCIL  AND  NEEDLE,  WITH  POLLEN. 

which  I  picked  off  the  plant  after  drawing  it,  and 
tried  with  a  pencil  myself,  r  in  the  lower  draw- 
ing looks  like  a  little  purple  velvet  pouch  swung 
lightly  on  its  stalk.  The  pencil  came  out,  leaving 
the  little  bag  empty,  and  the  pollen  glued  fast  to 


flowers  ^n  Fancy 


55 


its  side.  But  they  were  not  glued  so  fast  that 
they  were  not  pulled  off  by  the  next  flower  that 
the  pencil  entered. 

Some  of  the  orchids  have  two  pistils,  one  on 
each  side.  In  these,  if  you  push  into  the  tube  a 
bristle  or  needle,  the  two  pollen  cases  come  out  as 
in  Fig.  62,  J3;  as  they  dry,  they  spread  apart,  and 


FIG.  63.— BUTTERFLY'S  PRO- 
BOSCIS, WITH  POLLEN. 

a  a,  double  pollen-pods,  glued  on. 


bend  forward  so  that  both  pistils  are  struck  at 
once  as  it  is  pushed  into  the  next  blossom.  The 
contrivances  by  which  each  orchid  receives  on 
just  the  right  spot  exactly  the  right  pollen  are 


156  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

perfectly  marvellous.  I  have  only  told  you  a 
very  few  of  the  simplest  facts  in  regard  to  the 
help  the  insects  give  to  the  flowers.  Many  a  poor 
butterfly  goes  through  life  having  its  proboscis 
loaded  down  with  the  glued-on  pollen  cases  (Fig. 
63,  a  a).  It  is  one  of  those  business  arrangements 
which  does  not  work  equally  well  for  both  parties. 
All  this  is  beautiful  for  the  flowers,  but  it  seems 
rather  hard  on  the  butterflies. 


"Picciola."  157 


CHAPTER  XIII. 
"PICCIOLA." 

THERE  is  a  beautiful  little  French  story  which 
has  been  translated  into  English  and  called 
"  Picciola,"  the  Italian  for  little  flower.  It  is  the 
story  i)f  a  French  nobleman  who  was  thrown  into 
prison  on  an  unjust  charge  of  plotting  against 
the  government  of  his  country.  He  was  a  man 
of  talent  and  education,  as  well  as  of  wealth  and 
position.  Somehow,  with  all  his  life  had  given 
him,  it  had  never  taught  him  to  look  with  open 
eyes  at  nature,  or  to  see  beyond  nature  a  God 
who  had  created  it. 

He  was  restless  and  impatient  in  his  close  cell 
and  the  little  strip  of  court-yard  where  he  paced 
up  and  down,  and  up  and  down,  in  his  misery, 
longing  to  be  free.  One  day  he  saw  between 


158  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

the  heavy  paving  -  stones  of  the  yard  the  earth 
raised  up  into  a  tiny  mound.  His  heart  bound- 
ed at  the  thought  that  some  of  his  friends  were 
digging  up  from  below  to  reach  him  and  give 
him  his  liberty  again. 

But  when  he  came  to  examine  the  spot  closely 
he  found  it  was  only  a  little  plant  pushing  the 
earth  before  it  in  its  effort  to  reach  the  light  and 
the  air.  With  the  bitter  sense  of  disappointment 
which  this  discovery  brought,  he  was  about  to 
crush  the  little  intruder  with  his  foot,  and  then 
a  feeling  of  compassion  stopped  him,  and  its  life 
was  spared. 

The  plant  grew  and  throve  in  its  prison,  and 
the  Count  de  Charney  became  every  day  fonder 
of  his  fellow-prisoner ;  he  spent  hours,  which  had 
before  been  empty,  watching  it  as  it  grew  and 
developed,  until  it  became  the  absorbing  interest 
of  his  life.  As  he  watched  it  day  by  day,  and 
saw  the  contrivances  by  which  it  managed  to  live 
and  grow,  he  was  compelled  to  believe  that  there 


"Picciola."  159 

must  be,  somewhere,  a  great  and  wonderful  power 
that  could  design  and  make  so  marvellous  a  thing. 
The  little  flower  was  like  a  little  child  taking 
him  by  the  hand,  and  leading  him  away  from  his 
dark,  bitter,  unbelieving  thoughts  into  the  light 
of  God's  love. 

I  want  to  take  some  common  flower,  some- 
thing you  have  seen  a  hundred  times  every  sum- 
mer of  your  lives,  and  show  you  a  few  of  the 
marvellous  contrivances  that  make  it  able  to  live 
and  grow  and  bear  blossoms  and  fruit.  If  you 
will  study  them  closely  for  a  while,  it  will  not 
seem  so  strange  then  that  the  Count  de  Charney, 
who  had  lived  so  many  years  without  learning 
anything  of  the  wonders  of  nature,  should  have 
had  them  opened  for  him  by  one  little  flower 
that  he  had  carefully  watched  and  studied. 

Most  plants  higher  than  the  ferns  are  alike  in 
having  roots,  stems,  and  leaves,  and  some  sort  of 
flower  and  seed-vessel.  But  the  parts  look  so 
very  different  in  different  plants  that  it  is  some- 


160  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

times  a  little  hard  to  tell  which  is  which.  In 
some  the  roots  grow  in  the  air,  and  in  others  the 
stems  grow  underground.  It  is  only  by  studying 
what  the  parts  do  that  it  is  possible  to  be  sure 
what  they  are.  The  most  important  part  of  every 
living  thing  is  its  stomach,  because  everything 
that  lives  must  eat  and  drink,  or  die.  There  are 
some  very  curious  plants  which  have  regular 
stomachs  into  which  their  food  goes,  just  as  it 
does  in  an  animal,  and  is  digested,  but  these  are 
not  very  common.  After  a  while  we  will  come 
to  these  strange  plants,  which  I  have  called  veg- 
etable pitchers  and  queer  traps.  Ordinary  plants 
have  roots  to  supply  them  with  food  and  water 
in  the  place  of  a  stomach. 

Let  us  study  the  roots  of  some  plant.  Any  or- 
dinary plant  will  do.  If  you  can  do  so,  get  a  hya- 
cinth glass  and  bulb.  The  bulb  is  the  root,  and 
looks  very  much  like  an  onion ;  the  glass  is  a  vase 
made  for  the  purpose  of  growing  hyacinths  in 
water.  It  slopes  in  from  the  bottom  upward. 


and  then  bulges  out  suddenly.  The  bulb  rests 
in  this  bulging  part,  and  has  water  below  it  and 
around  its  lower  part.  The  glass  being  clear,  you 
can  see  the  roots  grow  as  plainly  as  you  can  see 
a  leaf  or  a  flower-bud  unfold.  Perhaps  you  have 
no  hyacinth  glass,  and  cannot  get  one ;  then  try 
to  make  one  for  yourself  out  of  a  small  glass  jar. 
There  will  certainly  be  a  pickle  bottle  or  a  pre- 
serve jar  about  the  house  which  will  answer  per- 
fectly well.  All  you  want  is  to  have  the  bulb 
rest  half  in  and  half  out  of  the  water,  with  room 
below  for  the  roots  to  spread  through  the  water. 
Be  careful  to  keep  the  water  up  to  the  right  mark 
by  adding  a  little  every  day  as  the  plant  soaks 
it  up. 

Or  you  may  take  a  dozen  grains  of  seed  corn, 
soak  them  overnight,  and  then  plant  them  an 
inch  deep  in  a  box,  having  about  six  inches  or 
more  depth  of  good  earth.  In  about  three  days 
the  blade  will  come  above  ground.  Put  your 
hand  or  a  trowel  down  beside  one  of  the  plants, 

11 


162 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


and  scoop  it  gently  up.  Be  sure  you  make  your 
hand  or  trowel  go  away  down  below  where  the 
seed  was  planted,  so  as  not  to  bruise  the  tender 

growth.  Shake 
and  blow  the  dust 
away,  and  you 
will  see  several 
little  white  thread- 
like roots  coming 
from  the  grain.  If 
you  take  up  in 
this  way  all  the 
young  plants,  one 
or  two  every  day, 
you  will  see  how 
they  sprout  and 
grow. 

If  you   have   a 
microscope  and  a 

(1)  Corn  four  days  planted;   r,  r,  r,  roots; 

leaf;  a,  grain  of  corn.     (2)  Root  magni-    sharp     knife,    Care- 
er! !  f,.  root  f»nn  :  n.  p-rowinp-  noint. 

fully  split  the  end 


FIG.  64.— CORN  AND  MAGNIFIED  ROOT. 


fied ;  c,  root  cap ;  g,  growing 
(Zea  mais.) 


point. 


"  Picciola"  163 

of  one  of  these  roots  and  look  at  it.  If  you  have 
not,  you  will  have  to  trust  me  so  far  as  to  take  this 
drawing  as  correct  (Fig.  64).  All  these  tiny  roots 
have  a  cap  over  their  growing  end,  so  that  when 
they  have  to  push  their  way  among  the  hard 
earth  and  stones,  the  growing  part  will  not  get 

bruised.     These  roots  take  in  all  the  water  and 

• 

the  food  which  the  earth  supplies  to  the  plant. 

The  hyacinth  can  grow  in  water  alone,  because 
it  has  been  a  provident  little  body,  and  has  stored 
away  enough  food  in  the  little  round  carpet-bag 
of  a  bulb  to  supply  the  plant  for  the  few  weeks 
of  its  life.  It  only  asks  for  the  water  it  needs  to 
keep  it  alive  and  growing.  When  the  thirsty 
little  roots  have  sucked  up  water  enough,  the 
bulb  begins  to  grow  in  the  other  direction.  If 
you  look,  you  will  see  a  solid  lump  of  pale  green 
come  up  from  the  top  like  the  horns  of  a  calf,  or 
a  baby's  tooth.  This  is  the  young  plant  coming 
up  out  of  its  dark  cradle  into  the  light  and  air 
and  sunshine.  The  delicate  growing  end  of  the 


164  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

plant,  which  will  after  a  while  bear  its  beautiful 
spike  of  bells,  is  very  tenderly  wrapped  up  in  the 
leaves.  After  it  gets  through  the  tough  skin  of 
the  bulb,  the  plant  grows  straight  up.  It  stretches 
itself  after  its  long  sleep  in  the  sweet  air  and 
light,  the  leaves  lengthen  and  broaden  and  open 
out,  and  the  stem  with  its  little  knobby  buds 
conies  up  in  the  midst.  These  will  soon  grow 
and  unfold  into  beauty  and  fragrance,  now  you 
will  be  rewarded  for  all  your  long  waiting,  if 
watching  the  wonderful  growth  day  by  day  has 
not  carried  its  own  reward  with  it. 

Many  plants  are  grown  from  roots  or  bulbs, 
but  a  greater  majority  by  far  come  from  seed. 
Tulips  and  lilies,  onions  and  potatoes,  are  all  in- 
stances of  plants  grown  from  new  roots  which 
sprout  out  from  the  old  ones.  The  root  is  in 
every  case  the  beginning,  the  seed  the  ending,  of 
the  life  of  a  plant. 

Take  two  of  the  commonest  of  our  window  and 
garden  plants — the  geranium  and  the  heart's- 


"Picciola." 


165 


ease.  Let  us  take  the  geranium  first.  On  the 
cluster  of  bloom  we  will  probably  find  flowers 
partly  withered,  flowers  full  -  blown,  and  buds 


FIG.  65.— GERANIUM  PISTIL. 

(1)  p,  lily  pistil;  b,  b,  pollen  grains;  c,  where  cut  was  made  across. 

(2)  c,  the  cut  piece  showing  ovules ;  o,  ovule. 

(Pelargonium.) 

nearly  ready  to  open.  Look  at  a  full-blown 
flower.  You  will  see  with  your  naked  eye  some- 
thing standing  up  in  the  middle  which  looks  like 


166 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


a  tiny  pink  lily ;  around  it  are  little  rounded 
white  spikes.  If  you  carefully  strip  off  the  green 
cap  outside,  and  then  the  colored  petals,  you  will 
find  a  lily  like  the  one  in  the  figure  (Fig.  65) ; 

this  is  called  the  pistil. 
Now  open  one  of  the 
nearly  blown  buds;  you 
will  find  the  lily  pistil 
still  closed,  and  on  two  of 
the  spikes  around  it  two 
double-barrelled  rosy 
pods.  When  the  pods,  or 
stamens,  are  nearly  ripe, 
they  look  for  all  the  world 

STAMEN   Hke    a    Plnk     gum-drop 

made  in  the    shape  of  a 

(1)  a.  stamen   with   pods    burst    -^  ,  -.,         -rr    ,-1 

open;  6, 6,  poiien  grains.   (2)  French  roll.     If  they  are 

&,  6,  6,  pollen  grain  much  en-      •          ,1          11 

larged  ripe  they  look  as  you  see 

(Pelargonium.)  in  Fig.  66. 

To  make  a  perfect  seed  the  pollen  and  ovule 
have   to   enter   into   partnership.      The   stamen 


AND  POLLEN  GRAINS. 


"Picciola."  16? 

sends  out  thousands  of  clear  orange  pollen  grains 
(Fig.  66,  &),  and  when  these  fall  on  the  top  of 
the  lily  or  pistil,  as  some  have  done  in  Fig.  65, 
they  stick  fast.  The  lily,  for  all  its  innocent  look, 
has  laid  a  trap  for  them;  it  is  covered  with  a 
sticky  substance  which  holds  them  fast.  The  tiny 
pollen  grain  begins  to  send  out  a  tube  like  a  little 
hose -pipe,  which  grows  down  and  down  to  the 
bottom  of  the  lily.  There  it  finds  some  very 
small. egg-shaped  bodies  called  ovules  (Fig.  65,  o). 
The  busy  little  hose-pipe  pushes  its  way  into  a 
little  opening  at  the  end  of  one  of  the  ovules, 
pumps  away  till  the  pollen  grain  is  empty,  and 
the  liquid  out  of  it  is  all  safely  stored  in  the 
ovule,  and  then  it  withers  away.  The  ovule  when 
it  is  ripe  is  a  seed,  but  if  the  pollen  has  not 
emptied  itself  in  the  way  just  described,  the 
ovule  dies. 

One  of  the  most  curious  plants  we  have,  in 
some  respects,  is  our  common  corn — Indian  corn. 
When  it  is  "  in  tassel,'1  at  the  top  of  the  stalk  is  a 


168  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

great  bunch  of  dull-colored  flowers.  If  you  look 
carefully  at  them  you  will  find  that  each  is  a 
leafy  case,  and  out  of  this,  like  the  clapper  of  a 
bell,  hang  several  pods.  When  the  pods  are  ripe, 
out  of  an  opening  at  the  lower  end  pours  a  cloud 
of  pollen,  which  fills  the  air  around  the  corn- 
stalk. We  have  seen  how  carefully  the  pollen  is 
guided  to  the  pistil  in  orchids,  the  methods  used 
to  make  sure  the  meeting  and  combining  of  the 
two  cells,  the  pollen,  or  whip,  and  the  ovule,  be- 
ing very  wonderful  and  various.  In  some  plants, 
like  the  corn  for  instance,  it  is  left  a  ^ood  deal  to 

/  o 

chance — the  wind  blows  the  pollen  about — but 
to  prevent  failure  millions  of  pollen  grains  are 
grown  and  dispersed,  with  the  chance  of  one  here 
and  there  reaching  the  pistil.  In  the  corn  the 
pistil  is  in  a  very  queer  place.  I  am  sure  you 
must  have  seen  the  cook  pulling  off  the  green 
leaves  or  husks  from  an  ear  of  green  corn,  or 
perhaps  you  have  done  it  yourself.  Out  of  the 
little  end  of  the  husks  hangs  a  bunch  of  fine 


"  Picciola"  169 

silky  threads.  Each  one  of  these  threads  is  a 
pistil;  it  is  a  hollow  tube,  and  terminates  at  its 
farther  end  in  a  little  sac  holding  an  ovule — it  is 
like  the  bottles  in  the  liverworts  and  mosses,  only 
it  has  a  tiny  little  body  and  a  long,  long  neck. 

It  seems  hardly  possible,  and  yet  it  is  true,  that 
eveiy  single  grain  of  corn  that  ever  grew  was 
made  by  a  partnership  between  a  pollen  grain 
from  the  top  of  the  corn-stalk,  and  this  little, 
buried,  wrapped-up  ovule,  down  deep  under  the 
green  leaves  of  the  corn -husk.  How  do  you 
think  the  pollen  ever  gets  at  the  ovule  ?  It  has 
not  the  power  of  whipping  around  and  making 
its  way  down  these  tubes.  A  little  pollen  grain 
blowing  about  in  the  air,  is  blown  against  a 
thread  of  corn -silk;  this,  like  other  pistils,  is 
sticky,  and  it  stays  there.  Pretty  soon  the  pollen 
grain  pushes  out  a  little  nose,  as  the  seed  and 
spores  do  when  they  begin  to  sprout ;  this  little 
tube  pushes  its  way  down  and  down,  right 
through  the  whole  long  length  of  the  corn-silk. 


170 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


It  never  sets  up  a  single  partition  wall  in  all  this 
long  distance.  After  a  while  the  pollen  tube 
finds  the  ovule  down  a  long  passage-way,  and 
then  the  partnership  is  formed. 

Every  strand  of  silk  on  a  perfect  ear  of  corn, 

when  the  grain  begins 
to  form,  is  a  double 
tube  —  one  tube  the 
silk,  with  another,  the 
pollen  tube,  running 
its  whole  length  inside 
it.  When  the  contents 
of  the  pollen  grain  is 
pumped  through  this 
long  hose-pipe  into  the 
ovule,  then,  and  not  till 
then,  the  seed  corn  be- 
gins  to  grow. 

The    very 


FIG.  67.  —  PISTIL  OF  HEART'S- 

EASE. 


(1)  Side  view  of  pistil  sliced  in  two. 
&,  pollen  grains  which  have  found 
their  way  in  ;  o,  ovules.    (2)  Front     you  Can   do   SO,  examine 
view  of  pistil  not  cut. 

(  Fi«a  tricolor.)  an  ear  of  corn  carefully. 


"  Picciola."  171 

You  will  find  each  thread  of  silk  leads  to  a  single 
grain.  If  any  place  is  found  on  the  cob  where 
a  grain  is  wanting,  it  is  because,  for  some  reason 
or  other,  no  pollen  tube  ever  gained  its  way  to 
the  ovule,  and  so  the  ovule  withered  and  died. 

If  you  look  at  Fig.  67,  you  will  see  the  pistil 
of  a  pansy,  or  heart's-ease.  No.  1  is  a  side  view 
of  the  pistil  sliced  down  so  you  can  see  into  it, 
as  you  can  into  a  baby-house.  You  see  the  pol- 
len grains,  £,  sending  down  their  tubes  to  the 
ovules,  o.  No.  2  in  this,  drawing  is  the  front 
view  of  the  heart's-ease  pistil.  The  beautiful 
colored  leaves  of  a  flower  are  only  meant  to 
cover  and  protect  the  pistil  and  the  pollen  of  the 
plant,  as  the  fruit  is  meant  to  cover  its  seed. 
There  has  been  a  tender  care  for  us  in  all  this 
that  the  covering  for  both  should  have  been 
made  so  beautiful  and  so  delicious. 


172  Chapters  on  Pl<mt  Life, 


CHAPTER  XIV. 
CLIMBING  PLANTS. 

HAVE  you  never  wondered,  when  you  looked 
at  a  tangle  of  grape-vine  or  morning-glory  stems, 
how  they  came  to  twist  themselves  together  so? 
Perhaps  you  had  some  sort  of  a  notion  that  they 
got  tangled  up  as  a  bunch  of  silk  or  a  skein  of 
worsted  lying  loose  might  do.  Examine  any  vine 
which  you  can  find  growing  near  you,  and  see  how 
different  the  tangle  is  from  a  snarl  of  thread : 
there  is  a  regular  twist,  the  branches  coiling  in 
the  same  direction.  In  some  plants  the  turn  is 
from  right  to  left,  in  others  from  left  to  right. 

There  must,  of  course,  be  some  reason  for  this, 
and  we  can  best  find  it  out  by  taking  a  young 
plant,  a  seedling,  and  watching  what  it  does  from 
the  start. 


Climbing  Plants.  173 

It  would  be  very  natural  to  think  that  plants 
moved  only  as  stones  do,  because  something  pulled 
or  pushed  them ;  but  this  would  not  be  a  true 
conclusion.  Every  plant  that  we  know  much 
about  is  firmly  fastened  by  its  root  in  the  ground ; 
the  movements  of  its  leaves  and  flowers  seem 
only  caused  by  the  blowing  of  the  wind  or  the 
beating  of  the  rain.  But  though  plants  are  an- 
chored fast  to  the  earth,  they  are  all  the  while 
moving  as  they  grow. 

Take  some  seed  —  beans  will  do  —  and  after 
soaking  them,  plant  them  in  the  ground  about 
two  inches  deep.  In  a  week  or  ten  days  you  will 
see  the  earth  cracked  all  about.  This  is  not 
merely  because  the  growing  plant  acts  like  a 
wedge  and  splits  the  earth  open,  but  because  in 
growing  the  first  little  leaves  move  round  and 
round,  boring  their  way  out  of  the  ground  very 
much  as  a  corkscrew  works  its  way  into  a  cork, 
and  cracks  the  earth  around  it.  The  first  leaves 
of  most  plants — a  bean,  for  instance — do  not  come 


174  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

straight  up  out  of  the  seed ;  but  when  the  seed 
coat  bursts  from  the  swelling  of  the  inner  part  a 

J 

r 


FIG.  68. — THE  BEAN.    FIRST  LEAVES  IN  DIFFERENT  STAGE& 

little  arch  projects,  which  raises  itself  up.  This 
arch  is  the  stem,  and  after  a  .while  the  leaves  are 
pulled  out  of  the  sheath,  and  the  arch  widens  out, 


Climbing  Plants.  175 

and  finally  straightens  up.  You  have  often  seen 
a  man  who  had  a  heavy  weight  to  lift  bow  him- 
self over  and  receive  the  weight,  and  then  lift  it 
by  straightening  himself,  as  the  stem  does  to  lift 
the  leaves  (Fig.  68,  first  leaves).  The  root  bur- 
rows into  the  earth  in  very 
much  the  same  way  as  the 
stem  revolves,  by  going 
around  and  around  as  it 
grows  (Fig.  69).  Take  a 

FIG.  69.—  MOVEMENT   OP 
morning-glory  vine,  and  let     ROOT  OF  BLACK  BEAN. 


it  lie  without  any  wire  or 

trellis  to  catch  hold  of.  After 

a  while  you   will  find  the  stems   and   tendrils 

coiled  round  each  other  in  a  tight  twist  (Fig.  70)  ; 

you  could  not  begin   to  twist  them  so  tightly 

yourself  without  breaking  the  stem. 

The  tips  of  all  growing  plants,  like  the  first 
leaves  that  pierce  the  ground,  move  around  ;  they 
are  forever  weaving  their  magic  circles  in  the  air; 
they  take  many  hours  sometimes  to  make  a  single 


176 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


turn,  but  they  are  as  regular  as  the  hands  of  a 
clock,  and  never  forget  and  go  backward.  I  have 
been  watching  some  wistaria  branches  lately,  and 


FIG.  70. — MORNING-GLORIES. 

(Convolvulus. ) 


have  been  very  much  interested  to  see  the  new 
shoots,  as  they  grew  rapidly  in  the  soft  warm 
air,  taking  a  slow  turn  around  the  wire  placed 


Climbing  Plcvnts. 


to  support  them,  very  much  as 

your  arm  about  a  swing -rope  to 

hold.     If  there  is  a  post  or  a  wire  near,  you  do 

not  have  to  give  your  vines  the  twist  they  need 

to  climb ;  they  do  their  own  twisting  as  they 

grow,  and  always  in  this  quiet,  deliberate  way. 

You  have  no  doubt  noticed 
that  a  Virginia  creeper  does  not 
need  a  wire  to  climb  by;  it 
grows  beautifully  up  any  wall 
which  has  little  unevennesses. 
Now  look,  if  you  can  get  hold 
of  a  new  shoot,  what  the  creeper 
has  to  help  it  along.  It  sends 
out  tendrils  that  branch  into 
many  ends,  and  each  one  of 
these  ends  swells  and  becomes 
a  sort  of  sticky  pad,  which  glues 
itself  to  the  wall  (Fig.  71). 
These  little  pads,  when  they  find  no  wall  to  fasten 
themselves  upon,  remain  small,  and  finally  wither 

12 


FIG.  71.— VIRGINIA 

CREEPER. 

(Ampelopsis.) 


178 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


away.  Those  on  the  spray  in  Fig.  71,  which  was 
trailing  from  a  vine,  are  so,  some  small  and  some 
quite  gone ;  but  look  at  the  pads  in  Fig.  72,  which 
were  detached  from  a  painted  board,  and  see  how 
they  look  through  the  microscope. 
Very  much  like  a  boy's  India-rub- 
ber sucker,  are  not  they  ?  Some 
of  these  have  the  paint  from  the 
board  still  sticking  fast  on  them; 
others  are  all  sparkling  with  the 
dried  mucilage,  which  makes  them 
look  as  if  they  had  been  sprinkled 
with  sugar. 

These  little  many-armed  suckers  give  the  plant 
a  firm  hold,  while  its  head  waves  around  until  it 
touches  some  surface  again,  and  again  the  pads 
lay  hold  for  another  upward  stretch. 

There  must  be  some  curious  arrangement  by 
which  plants,  that  cannot /M  and  will  as  animals 
do,  can  move.  They  have  no  brains  to  think  with, 
no  nerves  to  feel  with :  it  is  strange  to  believe 


FIG.  72.— PADS 
THROUGH  THE 
MICROSCOPE. 

(Ampelopsis.) 


Climbing  Plants.  179 

tLat  they  really  do  move  with  a  reason.  Mr, 
Darwin  has  examined  the  subject  so  closely  that 
he  has  taken  nearly  six  hundred  good-sized  pages 
to  tell  all  he  has  found  out  about  it.  His  ways 
of  finding  out  are  many.  One  method  is  this :  he 
takes  a  small  stiff  bristle  and  glues  it  on  the 
growing  part  of  a  shoot.  By  watching  this  shoot 
and  comparing  it  wTith  other  shoots  which  had  no 
bristle  attached,  he  could  not  detect  any  difference 
in  the  movements.  Above  the  little  branch  with 
the  bristle  attached  he  placed  a  piece  of  glass 
that  had  been  smoked,  so  that  the  bristle,  as  it 
moved  with  the  movement  of  the  tip,  would  travel 
over  the  glass.  He  did  not  need  to  stand  by  and 
watch  the  branch ;  he  could  go  away  and  attend 
to  anything  he  chose,  and  when  he  came  back 
there  on  the  glass  was  a  history  of  the  travels  the 
shoot  had  made,  written  by  itself.  He  managed 
to  hang  up  a  sprouting  beau  or  pea,  so  that  the 
root  recorded  its  own  movements  in  the  same 
way.  There  were  other  ways  which  he  used,  all 


180  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

of  them  being  ingenious,  and  requiring  the  great- 
est attention  to  get  a  correct  map  of  their  move- 
ments. He  found  that  every  plant  in  growing 
moved  around  as  well  as  upward,  but  that  some 
moved  far  more  than  others :  the  ones  that  grew 
tall  and  slender  and  needed  support  would  send 
out  shoots  that  swayed  round  in  bigger  and  bigger 
circles  until  they  could  reach  something  to  sustain 
themselves  by,  or  else  they  would  fall  in  helpless 
heaps  on  the  ground. 

Mr.  Darwin  was  not  a  man  to  be  satisfied  with 
finding  that  a  thing  is  so.  He  never  rested  until 
he  found  just  how  it  came  about.  I  do  not  mean 
to  say  that  he  was  the  only  man  who  studied 
these  things,  for  there  were  many  others  who  did ; 
but  he  wrote  about  what  he  had  studied  in  such 
a  clear  and  simple  and  interesting  way  that  any- 
body could  understand  him,  and  so  people  who 
don't  pretend  to  be  very  wise  in  such  matters 
read  Mr.  Darwin's  account  and  nobody's  else; 
and  are  apt  to  forget,  though  he  is  always  careful 


Climbing  Plants. 


181 


to  mention  their  names  and  what  they  have  done, 
that  any  one  else  deserves  any  of  the  credit. 

By  closely  studying  the  little  cells  of  which  the 
leaf  or  stem  is  made  up,  he  found  that  when,  for 
any  reason,  a  plant  needed  to  turn  in  a  certain 
direction,  the  water  in 
the  stem  rushed  from 
the  inner  to  the  outer 
part  of  the  curve,  mak- 
ing the  cells  on  the 
inner  side  of  the  stem 
a  little  smaller,  and 
those  on  the  outer  a 
little  larger,  than  usu- 
al. After  a  while  the 
stretching  of  the  outer 
cells  makes  them  grow  and  stay  larger  (see  in  the 
figure  how  it  must  be,  Fig.  73),  and  so  the  curve 
remains.  You  cannot  straighten  a  stem  curved 
in  this  way  without  breaking  it. 

Every  movement  of  stems  and  leaves  comes 


FIG.  73. — DIAGRAM  OF  STRAIGHT 

AND  CURVED  STEMS. 
a,  stretched  cells  ;  &,  crowded  cells. 


182  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

from  the  movement  of  the  water  that  fills  their 
cells.  But  besides  the  water,  there  is  something 
else  just  as  important,  and  that  is  the  sun.  The 
water  is  only  a  servant,  which  obeys  the  light  as 
its  master.  Many  flowers  turn  their  bright  faces 
always  to  the  light.  They  follow  the  sun  as  he 
moves  through  the  heavens  all  the  day  long 
from  his  rising  to  his  setting.  This  comes  from 
the  effect  the  sun  has  on  the  water  in  the  stem, 
and  not  because  the  flower  is  beginning  to  "  take 
notice,"  as  the  baby's  bright  eyes  do  of  a  lamp 
when  it  is  moved  about  a  room,  though  it  does 
remind  one  of  it. 

The  movement  of  climbing  plants  is  only  one 
of  many  curious  movements  that  are  made  by 
stems  and  roots  and  leaves  and  flowers,  though 
the  cause  is  the  same  in  all  cases. 


Vegetable  Pitchers.  133 


CHAPTER  XV. 

VEGETABLE  PITCHERS. 

NEARLY  seventy  years  ago  a  gentleman  living 
in  North  Carolina  began  to  watch  some  very  cu- 
rious plants  which  he  found  growing  in  a  poor 
piece  of  land  near  his  home.  Hundreds  of  peo- 
ple had  probably  seen  these  plants,  but  Dr. 
McBride  seems  to  have  been  the  first  who  really 
studied  them  and  wrote  down  what  he  found 
out  about  their  ways. 

Out  of  the  moist  ground  a  tuft  of  leaves  grew ; 
some  of  these  were  ordinary  leaves,  others  were 
extraordinary.  To  examine  the  last  you  might 
almost  think  that  the  fairies  had  been  up  very 
early  in  the  morning  with  their  thimbles  and 
needles  and  invisible  silk,  and  had  selected  a  leaf 
here  and  there  in  the  tuft,  and  doubled  it  around, 


184 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


and  sewed  the  edges  to- 
gether, so  as  to  make  a  long 
slender  pitcher  to  catch  the 
summer  rain  in.  If  the  fair- 
ies were  responsible  for 
these  pitchers,  they  must  be 
very  good  seamstresses  in- 
deed, for  such  a  seam  you 
never  saw.  You  may  look 
at  it  through  the  largest 
kind  of  a  magnifying  -  glass, 
and  not  a  stitch  can  be  seen, 
not  a  knot  nor  a  loose  thread. 
The  raw  edge  of  the  seam 
is  always  turned  outward. 
Look  at  Fig.  74.  Here  is  a 
single  pitcher  which  grew 

FIG.  74.—  OPEN-MOUTHED    not  far  from  New  York  City, 
in    a    SWampy     place.        Any 

fine  day  in  May  y°u  wil1  be 

(Sarracenia  purpurea.)          pretty    SUl'e    to    find   SOine   of 


/,  seam,  wUh^ney  trail; 

'    part;  ht  hood; 


Vegetable  Pitchers. 


185 


these  pitchers  for  sale  at 
the  small  stalls  on  Four- 
teenth Street,  between  Fifth 
and  Sixth  avenues,  if  you 
happen  to  be  in  New  York, 
and  are  on  the  lookout  for 
them  (/  is  the  seam  and  p 
the  pitcher).  Above  the 
pitcher  you  see  a  curved 
and  veined  leaf,  A,  which 
stands  up  and  partly  curves 
over  the  open  mouth,  m.  It 
does  not  quite  cover  it,  so 
some  rain  usually  gets  into 
the  hollow  tube. 

These    curious    trumpet- 
shaped  leaves  are  not  srrown 

FIG.  75.  —  PITCHER  WITH 

for   the    benefit    of  the   fair-     OVERHANGING  HOOD  AND 
f,  CLEAR  WINDOWS. 

ies,  nor  even  for  the  beetles    s,hood.w>windows;/)hon. 
and  flies  which  often  pack      ey  trail;  c>  cord  around 

mouth ;  m,  mouth. 
the  lower    part    Of  the    tube  (Sarracenia  varwlaris.) 


186  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

full,  but  are  for  the  use  of  the  plant  on  which 
they  grow.  I  have  never  found  insect  remains 
in  the  pitcher  you  have  first  been  looking  at, 
but  in  Fig.  75  I  have  taken  out  hundreds,  some- 
times packing  the  tube  up  for  four  inches  or 
more.  These  trumpets  are  the  stomachs  of  the 
plant;  the  flies  and  insects  in  the  trumpets  are 
the  remains  of  many  dinners — those  parts  of  the 
insects  which  they  could  not  digest. 

Plants  usually,  as  we  have  found  out,  feed  by 
means  of  their  roots.  The  food  they  get  is  in  the 
ground,  and  the  roots  push  down  into  this,  and 
suck  up  out  of  it  what  they  need  to  keep  them 
alive  and  make  them  grow.  The  pitcher-plants 
live  in  very  poor  soil,  where  they  can  find  very 
little  to  nourish  them.  They  get  little  besides 
water  through  their  roots.  They  would  die,  just 
as  you  or  I  would,  if  they  had  nothing  but  water 
to  live  on,  so  they  are  provided  with  these  stom- 
ach-pitchers. 

Before  you  eat  your  food  some  one  has  to  get 


Vegetable  Pitchers.  187 

it  and  cook  it;  then  you  have  to  chew  it  and 
swallow  it.  If  these  plants  had  one -half  of  all 
this  to  do  to  get  fed,  there  would  be  none  of 
them  on  the  earth  now;  they  would  all  have  died 
out  long  ago.  But  these  pitchers,  besides  being 
stomachs  to  digest  the  food,  are  traps  to  catch  it. 
Along  the  edge  of  the  raw  seam  (/,  Figs.  74  and 
75)  are  rows  of  honey  glands,  so  that  from  the 
ground  to  the  edge  of  the  pitcher's  brim  there  is 
a  trail  with  honey  drops  leading  a  careless  insect 
on  and  on,  and  up  over  the  edge,  £,  into  the  hol- 
low of  the  trap.  Once  inside,  there  is  no  hope 
for  him,  for  the  inner  part  is  covered  with  deli- 
cate hairs  pointing  downward  towards  the  pit 
below.  An  ant,  a  fly,  and  many  another  insect 
can  walk  straight  up  a  pane  of  glass,  or  on  the 
smoothest  ceiling,  and  yet  it  will  go  reeling  and 
tumbling  along  on  this  hairy  floor.  The  sticky 
pad  it  has  on  its  feet,  its  claws,  and  even  the  pat- 
ent little  sucker  which  aids  some  of  them  in  hold- 
ing on,  all  go  for  nothing  when  it  undertakes  to 


188  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

stroll  on  this  bending,  moving,  uncertain  wall 
inside  the  pitcher's  brim.  In  a  second  the  un- 
wary visitor  slips  and  falls,  no  matter  how  hard 
he  tries  to  save  himself.  Even  with  the  advan- 
tage of  wings  an  insect  seldom  escapes,  but  soon 
forms  part  of  the  liquid  mass  filling  the  lower 
part  of  the  pitcher — a  horrible  mixture,  part  wa- 
ter, part  a  juice  which  oozes  out  of  the  trumpet- 
leaf,  and  part  dead  and  decaying  insects. 

There  is  something  very  horrible  in  the  idea  of 
a  plant,  a  beautiful  plant,  too,  luring  insects  to  its 
trap,  and  then  feeding  on  them  like  a  dreadful  old 
ogre.  In  one  or  two  of  the  pitcher- plants  at  the 
upper  end  are  clear  spots  which  let  in  the  light. 
Against  these  skylights  the  trapped  flies  strike 
and  bump,  as  they  do  against  a  window-pane,  till 
they  fall  into  the  pit  below  (w,  Fig.  75).  This 
pitcher-plant,  as  well  as  that  shown  in  Fig.  76,  is 
rich  with  beautiful  colors,  red  and  yellow  and 
olive  green,  with  clear  pale  yellow  transparent 
windows,  and  above  the  cluster  of  these  leaves 


Vegetable  Pitchers. 

grow    the    stems    which 
bear  their  flowers. 

One  of  the  most  beau- 
tiful of  these  plants  grows 
in  the  Sierra  Nevada 
Mountains,  in  Northern 
California,  so  high  that 
the  flower  may  be  found 
blooming  higher  up  than 
the  top  of  Mount  Wash- 
ington or  any  mountain 
east  of  the  Mississippi 
River.  It  is  too  high  up 
in  the  world  to  have  any 
every -day  name,  but  is 
called,  in  part  after  its  na- 
tive State,  Darlingtonia 
calif ornica.  This  has  no 
common  leaves  at  all,  but 

from   the   root   Spring  two    FlG-  76. -PITCHER-PLANT  IN 

BLOOM. 
kinds    Of    pitchers  —  little  (Sarracenia  rubra.) 


190 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


baby  pitchers,  something  like  those  in  Fig.  76, 
and  others,  large,  beautifully  col- 
ored and  veined  pitchers,  with  a 
curved  -over  roof  and  two  long 
flaring  wings  (Fig.  77,  Darlingto- 
nia  calif  ornica). 

Every  one  of  these  pitchers  is 
twisted  round  about  half  a  turn. 
The  colors  are  like  those  of  rich 
ripe  fruit  —  brilliant  reds  and  yel- 
lows and   greens;  not 
brighter  than  those  of 
the  other  pitcher-plants, 
but  richer  and  mellow- 
er.    The  flower  of  this, 
too,  is  very  curious.     It 
grows   on   a  tall    stem 
four  or  five  feet  high, 
and  looks  like  a  rich 


FIG.  77.- 


CALI- 


FORNICA. 


tulip    hanging    down, 


Vegetable  Pitchers. 


191 


FIG.  78.  — BLADDER-WORT. 
(Utricularia.) 


but  with  an  extra  row  of 
petals  above.  The  flower 
is  arranged  as  a  trap  too. 
It,  like  the  orchid  traps, 
draws  the  insects  flying 
about  to  itself,  and  by  feed- 
ing them  with  honey  in- 
duces them  to  carry  the  pol- 
len of  the  flower  to  the 
sticky  place  where  the  pollen  dust  must  rest  to 
make  the  flower  bear  seed.  Then — it  is  hard  to 
think  of  this  beautiful  plant  without  feeling  that 

it  is  a  traitor — it  lures 
the  insects  to  its  pitch- 
ers and  devours  them. 
There  are  many  other 
plants  which  devour 
insects  as  the  vegetable 
pitchers  do.  Among 
them  are  some  very 

FIG.  79. — BLADDER  WITH  CAPT-  .  ..     _         .  . 

PREY.  curious   little  things 


192  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

that  grow  sometimes  in  water,  sometimes  in  the 
air,  and  occasionally  in  the  earth.  The  English 
people  call  them  bladder-worts,  because  on  the 
stems  or  roots  or  leaves  little  tiny  cups  grow, 
which  were  formerly  supposed  to  be  useful  as 
bladders  to  float  the  plants.  Closer  study  of 
them  has  shown  these  to  be  traps  too.  One 
of  the  most  curious  of  these  traps  may  be  seen  in 
Fig.  78. 

The  plant  you  see  here  is  one  which  has  no 
leaves,  only  branching  stems.  This  is  one  of  the 
kind  that  live  in  water.  It  goes  floating  around, 
looking  like  the  most  innocent  of  plants,  until 
some  unwary  animal  comes  near  the  mouth  of 
one  of  the  bladders  (Fig.  79).  In  a  minute  the 
mouth  or  trap- door  opens,  the  victim  is  gulped 
down,  and  slowly  dissolved  and  absorbed.  In- 
side the  stomach  you  will  see  a  quantity  of  little 
irregular  stars  with  four  rays.  These  are  the 
organs  that  take  up  the  nourishment  which  the 
unfortunate  prey  supplies. 


Some  Queer  Traps.  193 


CHAPTER   XVI. 
SOME  QUEER   TRAPS. 

I  WANT  to  take  you  with  me  some  bright  sum- 
mer day  on  a  little  visit  to  the  boggy  lands  of 
southern  New  Jersey.  Close  beside  a  cranberry 
patch  let  us  stop  and  look  at  this  great  bed  of 
wild  flowers.  The  ground  is  covered  as  thick  as 
they  can  stand  with  spikes  of  delicate  rosy  flow- 
ers and  long  narrow  green  leaves,  sparkling  in 
the  sunshine  as  though  they  were  set  with  mill- 
ions of  bright  jewels.  These  cannot  be  rain-drops, 
for  it  has  not  rained  for  a  week,  nor  dew-drops, 
for  the  sun  is  high,  and  the  dew  would  have  been 
dried  up  long  ago.  Look  close,  and  you  will  see 
that  each  narrow  leaf  is  covered  with  tiny  stalks, 
each  tipped  with  a  bright  drop  of  what  looks  like 
dew.  Touch  it,  and  you  will  find  the  drop  to  be 

16 


194 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


sticky.     The  sun,  which   dries  common   dew  or 
rain  drops,  draws  out  this  sticky  substance.    From 

this  fact  the  plant  is 
commonly  called  sun- 
dew (Fig.  80). 

The  sun-dew  in  the 
picture  is  not  the  one 
we  have  just  found  grow- 
ing, but  belongs  to  the 
same  family.  The  prin- 
cipal difference  between 
them  is  that  it  has  round 
green  leaves  instead  of 
long  narrow  ones;  but 
what  is*  true  of  one  is 
equally  true  of  the  other, 
so  far  as  its  general  be- 
havior is  concerned. 

^  had  long  been 
known  that  the  sticky 

FIG,  80. — SUN-DEW  PLANT. 

drops   on   the  sun -dew 


Some  Queer  Traps.  195 

leaves  served  as  a  trap  to  catch  insects,  but  it  was 
not  fully  known  why  the  insects  were  so  caught 
and  how  they  were  disposed  of  until  Mr.  Darwin 
began  to  watch  them  and  study  their  ways.  If 
anybody  in  the  world  could  get  the  truth  out  of 
a  plant  or  animal,  Mr.  Darwin  was  the  man.  He 
tried  a  thousand  ingenious  ways  of  cross -ques- 
tioning them  by  tests  and  experiments.  There 
are  few  more  interesting  stories  than  that  told  us 
about  the  ways  of  the  flesh-eating  plants.  The 
sun-dew  is  one  of  these;  the  insects  it  captures 
are  for  food. 

Look  at  this  leaf,  which  was  picked  from  a  sun- 
dew plant  and  looked  at  through  a  magnify  ing- 
glass  (Fig.  81).  It  is  somewhat  the  shape  of  a 
palm-leaf  fan,  fringed  around  the  edge,  and  covered 
over  the  upper  surface  with  strange  prolongations. 
These  are  called  tentacles,  because  they  are  some- 
thing like  the  arms  of  some  sorts  of  sea  animals, 
with  which  they  capture  their  prey.  The  leaf  is 
not  perfectly  flat,  but,  as  you  can  see  by  looking 


196 


Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 


at  Fig.  80,  it  sags  a  little  in  the  middle,  making 
it  slightly  cup-shaped. 


FIG.  81. — SUN-DEW  LEAF  MAGNIFIED,  SHOWING  TENTACLES. 

(Drosera  leaf.) 

For  some  reason  insects  seem  to  be  very  fond 
of  flying  around  the  sun-dew  plants,  and  sooner 


Some  Queer  Traps.  197 

or  later  they  are  pretty  sure  to  brush  their  gauzy 
wings  against  a  leaf  or  light  upon  one.  Then 
there  is  no  hope  for  them;  they  stick  fast,  just  as 
unfortunate  flies  stick  to  the  fly-paper  spread  open 
to  catch  them. 

Watch  that  happy  little  fly  sipping  honey  from 
one  flower  after  another.  Now  see  him  settle  down 
right  on  the  middle  of  one  of  the  sparkling,  harm- 
less-looking leaves.  He  is  caught.  No  struggles 
will  loosen  the  poor  little  feet  glued  fast  by  the 
sticky  drop  on  the  tentacle.  His  struggles  to  free 
himself  are  only  making  his  capture  more  certain. 
The  touch  of  his  feet,  light  as  it  is,  is  like  the 
touch  of  a  telegraph  operator's  finger  upon  his 
instrument.  The  fly  sends  not  one  message  by 
his  touch,  but  hundreds — one  to  every  tentacle 
on  the  leaf,  telling  it  to  come  to  the  central  office 
and  get  its  share  of  the  booty  captured.  In  re- 
sponse every  tentacle  begins  to  curve  over  to  the 
middle  of  the  leaf,  until  at  last  the  miserable  fly 
is  caught  in  a  hundred  arms. 


198  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

The  message  goes  slowly,  and  the  movement 
of  the  tentacles  is  slower  still — so  slow  that  it 
takes  from  one  to  five  hours  for  the  movement  to 
cease  after  the  insect  is  caught.  When  the  fly 
alights  on  the  side  of  the  leaf,  or  anywhere  away 
from  the  middle,  the  tentacle  it  touches  bends 
over,  carrying  its  prey  with  it,  to  the  centre  of 
the  leaf,  and  then  the  arms  all  begin  to  move 
towards  the  middle  and  clasp  it.  Sometimes, 
when  the  insect  is  not  on  a  long  tentacle,  and  so 
cannot  be  carried  to  the  middle,  only  the  arms  on 
that  side  clasp  it. 

But  the  most  curious  part  is  not  the  catching 
of  the  fly.  Many  other  kinds  of  sticky  leaves 
and  buds  catch  flies;  the  sun-dew  devours  them. 
The  leaf  acts  precisely  as  your  stomach  does  after 
you  have  been  eating;  it  pours  over  the  insect  a 
liquid  acid  which  dissolves  what  is  good  for  food. 
This  dissolved  food  causes  the  flow  of  another 
liquid,  called  the  gastric  juice.  In  your  stomach 
the  gastric  juice  has  the  power  of  turning  the  food 


Some  Queer  Traps.  199 

you  have  swallowed  into  blood,  which  makes 
flesh  and  bones ;  it,  in  fact,  builds  up  your  body 
day  by  day,  and  makes  you  live  and  grow.  The 
gastric  juice  of  the  sun-dew  builds  up  its  body  in 
the  same  way,  only  instead  of  blood  and  flesh  it 
makes  sap  and  cells. 

If  you  want  to  keep  well,  you  must  eat  the 
right  sort  of  food,  and  so  must  the  sun-dew.  One 
poor  little  plant  that  Mr.  Darwin  was  experiment- 
ing upon  turned  yellow  and  sick,  and  finally  died 
of  dyspepsia,  after  having  been  fed  for  a  long 
time  on  nothing  but  cheese. 

One  full  meal  lasts  a  sun-dew  leaf  a  good  while, 
usually  nearly  a  week.  After  a  fly,  or  a  bit  of 
meat,  or  anything  proper  in  the  way  of  food,  has 
been  seized  and  digested,  the  tentacles  slowly 
open  out.  That  means  that  it  is  hungry  again, 
and  ready  for  another  meal. 

Of  course  when  the  plants  grow  wild  they  have 
to  depend,  like  other  savages,  upon  the  prey  they 
capture,  and  often  they  must  go  hungry.  In  try- 


200  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

ing  to  find  out  all  about  these  curious  plants  they 
have  been  fed  with  all  sorts  of  things — meat  and 
milk,  and  different  kinds  of  soup.  When  a  few 
drops  of  milk  are  poured  on  a  leaf  it  will  very 
often  curve  up  around  the  edges,  making  the  cup 
deeper,  and  the  tentacles  at  the  same  time  bend 
over  to  get  their  share.  The  leaf  makes  in  this 
way  sometimes  a  round  and  sometimes  a  three- 
cornered  cup.  One  very  strange  thing  has  been 
found  out :  if  a  small  piece  of  meat  is  cut  in  two, 
half  of  it  placed  on  a  sun-dew  leaf,  and  the  other 
on  some  damp  moss  close  by,  the  meat  on  the 
moss  spoils,  and  is  filled  with  living  things,  like 
any  spoiled  meat,  but  the  piece  on  the  leaf  stays 
fresh  until  it  is  digested. 

Another  plant  which  lives  upon  the  prey  it 
captures  is  the  Venus's  fly-trap  (Fig.  82).  It 
grows  in  great  quantities  on  the  poor  lands  of 
North  Carolina.  It  has  few  and  small  roots  like 
the  sun-dew.  The  leaves  grow  out  from  the  cen- 
tre of  the  plant.  From  the  same  place  the  flower 


Some  Queer  Traps. 


201 


stems  and  roots  also  grow,  just  as  is  the  case  in 
the  sun-dew.  Only  three  leaves  are  given  in  the 
picture.  The  plant  usually  has  from  eight  to 


FIG.  82.— LEAVES  OF  VENUS'S  FLY-TRAP. 

A,  A,  A,  three  leaves  of  Dioneae ;  £,  half  the  trap,  showing  sensitive  hairs ; 

a,  opening  and  empty ;  &,  open ;  c,  closing  over  fly. 

(Dionece. ) 

twelve ;  the  flowers  are  quite  large,  of  a  delicate 
greenish- white.  The  whole  leaf  is  not  a  trap,  but 
on  the  tip  of  each  leaf  you  see  them :  b  is  open ; 


202  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

G  is  closing  over  a  fly  which  it  is  about  to  make  a 
meal  of. 

The  traps,  you  see,  are  a  little  like  the  two 
valves  of  a  clam-shell,  hinged  together  at  the  back, 
and  edged  all  around  with  sharp  spikes.  On  the 
inner  side  of  each  shell  are  three  long  hairs ;  these 
hairs  (B,  Fig.  82)  are  very  sensitive,  and  the  in- 
stant they  are  touched  the  valves  close,  the  spikes 
locking  together  as  your  fingers  do  when  you 
clasp  your  hands.  If  the  thing  caught  in  the  trap 
is  not  fit  for  food,  the  valves  open  before  long; 
but  if  it  is  the  right  sort  of  food,  the  spikes  stay 
closely  clasped  until  the  food  is  digested,  and 
then  they  open  and  drop  out  any  remains  which 
were  of  no  use  to  them,  such  as  the  horny  coat 
of  a  beetle,  and  are  ready  for  another  feast. 

One  day  when  I  was  looking  through  a  fine 
collection  of  plants  in  a  greenhouse  on  Madison 
Square,  New  York,  I  caught  sight  of  a  very  sin- 
gular bunch  of  leaves  (Fig.  83).  I  said  to  the 
gardener:  "What  is  that?  It  is  very  curious." 


Some  Queer  Traps. 

"Yes,"  he   said,  taking   the 
pot  up  in  his  hands;  "they 
are  queer  little  fellows,  the 
thirstiest  little  rascals  I  ever 
saw ;  can't  get  enough  water 
anyhow,"  and  he  dipped  the 
whole  pot  into  a  cask  of  wa- 
ter, filling   up   the   pitchers 
on  the  ends  of  the  leaves  to 
the    brim.     The 
picture  (Fig.  83) 
is  taken  from  a 
sketch  made  on 
the     spot.       It 
comes  from  Aus- 
tralia, and  is  still, 
I    believe,    very 
rare;  this  is  the 
only  one  I  ever 
saw.     Its  habits 
and   manners  do 


FIG.  b3. — AUSTRALIAN  PITCHER-PLANT 
(Cephalotm.) 


204  Chapters  on  Plant  Life. 

not  seem  to  have  been  as  carefully  studied  as  some 
of  the  other  flesh-eating  plants,  but  it  is  a  near 
cousin  of  the  last  and  most  curious  of  these  traps. 

These  last  of  the  "queer  traps"  grow  chiefly  in 
the  islands  of  Polynesia.  In  shape  they  are  some- 
thing like  the  vegetable  pitchers  we  saw  in  the 
last  chapter,  but  their  way  of  really  digesting 
food  shows  that  they  are  nearer  kin  to  the  sun- 
dew than  to  the  pitcher-plants. 

The  plants  are  large,  with  many  leaves,  the 
stem,  after  running  through  the  middle  vein  of 
the  leaf  instead  of  stopping  at  the  tip,  runs  right 
through  it,  and  grows  one  or  more  feet  beyond 
the  tip  of  the  leaf.  On  the  far  end  of  this  stem 
is  a  graceful  pitcher,  with  two  fringed  flaps  down 
the  front,  and  a  leaf  hinged  on  for  a  lid  which 
is  sometimes  open  and  sometimes  shut  (Fig.  84). 
The  pitcher  is  usually  partly  filled  with  a  sticky 
liquid.  Some  of  these  pitchers  are  half  a  yard  high, 
and  would  hold  quarts  and  quarts  of  water.  The 
plant  bears  great  spikes  of  beautiful  flowers,  and 


Some  Queer  Traps. 


205 


the  pitchers  themselves  are  gorgeous  in  color 

green  and  red  and  pink,  with  curious  markings. 
The  rim  around  the  mouth  is  beautifully  orna- 
mented, and  inside  the 
mouth  is  a  sort  of  fun- 
nel of  projecting  points, 
leading  down  to  the 
trap  below.  You  have 
probably  seen  the  same 
sort  of  arrangement  in 
a  rat-trap;  it  is  very 
common.  Small  birds 
attracted  by  the  smell 
or  color  of  the  flower, 
or  the  hope  of  a  drink 
from  the  reservoir  be- 
low, make  their  way 
down.  It  is  a  trap  easy 
to  enter,  but  hard  to 
escape  from  in  the  face 
of  the  points.  In  its 


206  ^ft&pters  on  Plant  Life. 

struggle  for  freedom  the  poor  little  fluttering 
thing  gets  its  wings  wet  and  sticky,  and  is  either 
drowned  at  once,  or  lingers  on  and  is  finally  di- 
gested by  its  beautiful  captor.  This  is  turning 
the  tables  truly,  when  vegetables  catch  and  de- 
vour birds,  instead  of  being  destroyed  and  eaten 
by  them. 

These  are  perhaps  the  most  wronderful  family 
of  plants  that  we  know  anything  of.  They  seem 
to  be  leading  us  away  from  the  vegetable  world 
and  to  be  introducing  us  to  animal  manners  and 
customs,  and  so  seem  to  bring  to  a  natural  close 
our  studies  in  plant  life. 


END. 


U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


1 


COEb07fib37 


